March 2017

While President Donald Trump has not moved to fill many jobs that require Senate confirmation, he has quietly installed hundreds of officials to serve as his eyes and ears at every major federal agency, from the Pentagon to the Department of Interior. Unlike appointees exposed to the scrutiny of the Senate, members of these so-called “beachhead teams” have operated largely in the shadows, with the White House declining to publicly reveal their identities. While some names have previously dribbled out in the press, we are publishing a list of more than 400 hires, providing the most complete accounting so far of who Trump has brought into the federal government. Here is a run-down of some of the Trump hires:

Curtis Ellis was a columnist for WorldNetDaily, a website best known for its enthusiastic embrace of the false notion that President Obama was born outside the United States. Ellis was hired Jan. 20 as a special assistant to the secretary at the Labor Department. Asked about his role in a brief phone interview, he said: “Nothing I can tell you.”
Jon Perdue, a self-described guerrilla warfare expert and fellow at a little-known security think tank, wrote a book called “The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.” He is also a onetime contributor to Breitbart. Perdue was hired as a special assistant at the Treasury Department.

Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a bill aimed at cracking down on robocalls from government contractors. The bill, dubbed the Help Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone Calls (HANGUP) Act, would remove loopholes that exempt government contractors and federal debt collectors from robocall regulation, the lawmakers said.

“When Congress passed the [Telephone Consumer Protection Act], the goal was clear: consumers should not be subject to unwanted robocalls and robotexts on their phones,” Sen Markey said. “But recent carveouts by Congress and the FCC allow government contractors to robocall and robotext consumers without their affirmative express consent," he added, referring to the Federal Communications Commission. Sen Lee characterized the legislation as "a check on Congressional entitlement and bureaucratic overreach." "If independent and private businesses are not allowed to harass consumers with unwanted robocalls and texts, government and government contractors should be held to that same standard," Sen Lee said.