Donald Trump, in a second term, would make good on his pledge to "drain The Swamp", according to a report.
How?
By gutting the bureaucracy on which the Media-K Street-"deep state" eco system depends.
Anxiety about this eventuality has likely spurred the disproportionate reaction formation toward Trump throughout his four-year term and continuing 18 months after he exited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
If he were to win the 2024 election, Trump would go on to "clean house" at the Department of Justice, FBI, State Department, and Pentagon, Axios reported on Friday.
The plan is based on an executive order known as “Schedule F,” which was launched 3 days before the 2020 presidential election, but was quickly rescinded by Team Biden, the report noted. Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.
Schedule F overhauls the power that the president has over federal employees. As part of a normal presidential transition, around 4,000 “political” appointees will be needed to be hired and appointed by the incoming president, including around 1,200 that need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Under Trump's plan, all federal employees who have influence over policy in some form would be subject to being ousted. Approximately 50,000 workers out of the federal workforce of 2 million would likely be classed as Schedule F, D.C. insiders say, a large number of whom currently enjoy strong employment protections.
The plan "would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy," the Axios report said.
Trump’s allies said they will not have to fire anything close to 50,000 federal workers to achieve the desired result, as one source told Axios, of “behavior change.” Firing a smaller segment of “bad apples” among the career officials at each agency would effect others who may be tempted to obstruct Trump’s orders.
Trump's allies say Schedule F will finally end the “farce” of a nonpartisan civil service that they say has been filled with activist liberals who have been undermining GOP presidents for decades.
"Trump’s advisers like their chances in a judicial system now dominated at its highest levels by conservatives," the report said.
Virginia Democrat Rep. Gerry Connolly, who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the federal civil service, said he never stopped worrying about Schedule F, even after Biden rescinded the order.
Connolly said he is so alarmed that he attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate.
The preparations to put Trump's plan into action "are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported," Axios said.
Sources told Axios about backroom plans that have taken shape, including series of interactions in Florida in April.
Jeffrey Clark, was served as acting head of the DOJ's civil division at the end of the Trump administration, told donors at the April meeting what he thought would happen with the DOJ if Trump won the 2024 election.
In a second term, Clark predicted, Trump would never appoint an attorney general who was not completely on board with his agenda.
"There was a buzz around Clark. Given Trump wanted to make him attorney general in the final days of his first term, it is likely that Clark would be a serious contender for the top job in a second term," the Axios report said.
Also at the April meeting, according to the Axios report, was a conversation between Trump national security adviser Kash Patel and Mark Paoletta, a former senior Trump administration lawyer with a reputation for finding lateral ways to accomplish Trump’s goals. The Patel-Paoletta panel discussion was titled, “Battling the Deep State.”
"Paoletta was a close family friend and prominent public defender of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas," the report said. "Throughout the Trump administration, Ginni Thomas had taken a strong interest in administration personnel. She complained to White House officials, including Trump himself, that Trump’s people were obstructing 'MAGA' officials from being appointed to key roles in the administration."
Axios previously reported that Ginni Thomas "had assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them."
Her recommendations to the White House included appointing former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino for a Homeland Security or counterterrorism adviser role.
Patel, who played a central role in the GOP’s scrutiny of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation while working for Rep. Devin Nunes, has become a close ally of Trump.
Some of Nunes’s and Patel’s criticisms of the DOJ’s actions were later validated by an inspector general, "and Trump came to view Patel as one of his most loyal agents. He put him on his National Security Council and made him the Pentagon chief of staff," Axios noted.
During the April discussion, Patel portrayed the national security establishment in Washington, D.C., "as malevolently corrupt. He claimed the intelligence community had deliberately withheld important national security information from Trump," the report said.
The report cited to two people in the room as saying that Patel told the audience he had advised Trump to fire senior officials in the DOJ and he lamented the appointments of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray. Paoletta also recounted to the audience instances in which Trump officials refused or slow-walked lawful directives because they disagreed with Trump’s policies.
"Patel’s message to the audience was that things would be different next time. A source in the room said later the takeaway from the session was that if Trump took office in 2025, he would target agencies that conservatives have not traditionally viewed as adversarial," the report said.
Deep State purge!
Deep State purge! Deep State purge! pic.twitter.com/0KZ9tSm4K7 — Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 22, 2022
Action . . . . Intelligence . . . . Publish
