Trump's corruption knows no bounds...
White House uses foreign aid agency to give jobs to Trump loyalists
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
July 28 at 6:00 PM
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.
In recent weeks, Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, put a hold on a water project in Mongolia while congressional investigators examined the impact of the Trump appointments at MCC. Two weeks ago, he lifted the hold as part of a negotiation with Senate Republicans for limited access to MCC résumés and other personnel documents.
In a statement to The Post, Menendez condemned the administration’s “practice of replacing seasoned professional and programmatic experts with patronage hires.” He said that “blind loyalty seemingly trumps qualifications, experience and career public servants.”
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/white-house-uses-foreign-aid-agency-to-give-jobs-to-trump-loyalists/2018/07/28/3f819ac2-86da-11e8-8589-5bb6b89e3772_story.html?utm_term=.f29dd140a790
DO SOMETHING!
| 