White House uses foreign aid agency to give jobs to Trump loyalists

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews.

Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House, former agency officials said. The chief executive, in turn, used authority granted to the agency by Congress to appoint about two dozen other staffers, primarily for their technical ­expertise.


But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions, according to internal rosters obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with former employees and other knowledgeable people. The employees were warned by an agency leader they could lose their jobs to make way for the new political appointees, the former employees said.

Fourteen allies and Trump loyalists have been placed at the agency as political appointees so far — more than double the number of political staff on the day the president took office, the rosters show. Among them are a 2016 college graduate with a degree in English literature whose grandmother is a senior personnel official in the White House and a recent congressional intern who graduated in May with a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-uses-foreign-aid-agency-to-give-jobs-to-trump-loyalists/ar-BBLbE6Q?li=BBnbcA1

Grifters gonna grift.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. The source for this:

David Fahrenthold Retweeted:

White House uses foreign aid agency to give jobs to Trump loyalists

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Investigations

White House uses foreign aid agency to give jobs to Trump loyalists

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. July 28 at 6:00 PM [link:[e-mail]|Email the author]

The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews. ... Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House, former agency officials said. The chief executive, in turn, used authority granted to the agency by Congress to appoint about two dozen other staffers, primarily for their technical ­expertise.

But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions, according to internal rosters obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with former employees and other knowledgeable people. The employees were warned by an agency leader they could lose their jobs to make way for the new political appointees, the former employees said.

Fourteen allies and Trump loyalists have been placed at the agency as political appointees so far — more than double the number of political staff on the day the president took office, the rosters show. Among them are a 2016 college graduate with a degree in English literature whose grandmother is a senior personnel official in the White House and a recent congressional intern who graduated in May with a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. ..,. The White House’s reach into MCC operations sheds new light on the administration’s appointment process and shows how even obscure parts of the federal bureaucracy traditionally viewed as nonpartisan are being drawn into partisan orbits.
....

Politicalization worries

The most controversial of the new appointees is Robert Blau, a retired Foreign Service officer who served as a speechwriter on Trump’s campaign. He was named MCC’s vice president of compact operations in the spring of 2017. ... Soon after arriving, he filled his office with Trump campaign memorabilia, which he later removed after colleagues suggested it was not appropriate for a federal office, according to officials at the agency at the time who spoke on the condition of anonymity. During a staff town hall meeting last year, Blau, who was then director of operations, described himself as “a partisan conservative Republican” and complained that certain media were “out to get Trump every day,” according to a routine recording of the meeting made by the ­agency.
....

Andrew Ba Tran contributed to this report.

Robert O’Harrow Jr. is a reporter on the The Washington Post's investigations unit who focuses on accountability, technology and the federal government. He was on the Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Roy Moore, and he is a two-time Pulitzer finalist. He is author of The Quartermaster, a biography of Montgomery C. Meigs. Follow https://twitter.com/robertoharrow