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A thousand miles from the austere buildings where Washington runs, Donald Trump’s transition team in his Mar-a-Lago resort has begun what a close ally calls a hostile takeover of the federal government.Since his victory, Trump has ignored many of the rules and practices intended to guide a seamless transfer of power and handover of the oversight of 2.2 million federal employees. Instead, the president-elect, who has pledged to fire thousands of civil servants and slash billions of dollars in spending, has so far almost fully cut out the government agencies his predecessors have relied on to take charge of the...

Who is the leaker in the Trump Transition team? Vanity Fair on Thursday evening, citing a “transition source,” dropped a hit piece on Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary. Citing two sources, Vanity Fair reported that Trump’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, was briefed about a sexual misconduct allegation involving Pete Hegseth. “Donald Trump’s transition team scrambled Thursday after Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was presented with an allegation that former Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Defense Secretary, had engaged in sexual misconduct. According to two sources, Wiles was...

This is an inside baseball story that will be overlooked by most, but it carries profound implications. The winner of the presidential election usually merges the president-elect’s transition team with the federal transition system. Current government bureaucrats then begin a process of briefings, agency/institutional transfer coordination and funding to assist the incoming president’s team. However, as we saw in the aftermath of the 2016 election, the government side of the transition worked behind the scenes to impede Trump’s ascendency into office, and factually supported the corrupt government IC officials who were targeting Trump. For election 2024, President Trump’s transition team...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard will join Former President Donald Trump’s potential transition team as honorary co-chairs if he wins the 2024 presidential election. A transition team enables an orderly and peaceful transfer of power and conducts post-election responsibilities, such as vetting, selecting, and appointing presidential personnel. “We look forward to having their powerful voices on the team as we work to restore America’s greatness,” Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, told the New York Times on Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump announced his White House transition team Friday, revealing the key members who will prepare his day-one rollout. The team will include Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick as co-chairs, and some of Trump’s closest allies as honorary chairs, including his vice president, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and his eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. McMahon is a former professional wrestling performer and business executive who served as Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration during his first term before chairing the super PAC America First Action. Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is a billionaire...

First on Fox: Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says. Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 focused on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, who has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. Sussman has pleaded not guilty.

Joe Biden's transition team is announcing his picks for the Cabinet, and the once-vigilant press corps has adopted a tone as bland as dollar-store instant oatmeal. Take the Department of Health and Human Services. Four years ago, when then-President-elect Donald Trump's transition team signaled it would pick then-Rep. Tom Price as HHS secretary, The New York Times' front page on Nov. 29, 2016, carried the headline "Fierce Critic of Health Care Law Said to Be Pick for Health Dept." Reporter Robert Pear began by describing Fierce Tom Price as a "dismantler" of Obamacare: "If President-elect Donald J. Trump wanted a...

Wall Street and the biggest U.S. banks, after spending a fortune to unseat President Trump, are getting key spots in Democrat Joe Biden’s transition team that he has devised before the presidential election is certified. Detailed by the New York Times, Biden’s list of transition team members includes former Wall Street employees and those with close ties to Wall Street. Many of the big banks with links to Biden transition team members were major donors to the former vice president. The Times reports: Commerce Department: The review team is led by Geovette Washington of the University of Pittsburgh, who previously...

Cindy McCain, the widow of Republican Sen. John McCain, is joining the board of Joe Biden’s presidential transition team, according to a report on Monday. As a member of the advisory board, McCain will offer her input while the Democrat’s team turns his campaign promises into policies that can be enacted once he takes office, The Wall Street Journal reported. The GOPer — whose late husband served as Arizona senator and party stalwart for more than 30 years before dying of cancer in 2018 — is expected to advise the team on issues affecting women and children, the report said.

The General Service Administration (GSA) secretly gave President Donald Trump’s transition team records to then-special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI in 2017, a report by two Senate committees says. Meanwhile, the GSA refused to provide Trump’s transition team copies of its own records, according to the report. GSA, the executive agency responsible for providing services to the transition teams of both Democrat and Republican candidates, had agreed to a memorandum of understanding with Trump’s transition team. According to the memorandum, the records would be regarded as the private property of the transition team and the GSA would not retain...

Someone needs to explain to Joe Biden that he's the presumptive Democratic nominee, not the presumptive next president. The Democratic candidate is reportedly assembling a White House transition team with over six months to go before the general election. During a virtual fundraising event, Biden announced his campaign has already begun building a transition team, and the candidate would not rule out announcing cabinet nominees before November's election. "Sounds presumptuous," Biden acknowledged. "I don't want to say we started thinking about it a month ago -- we did -- because that sounds like I was certain this was going to...

It is my belief, based on mounting evidence, a specific cast of characters -within the Mueller “Russia Election Interference” probe- were placed there to protect people behind the FBI’s initial false claims. Those claims formed the basis for the counterintelligence operation against 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump. According to reports, in August 2017 the Mueller team went around the Trump administration in their quest for documents, by directly demanding documents from the General Services Agency (GSA); the entity that hosted the communication network for the Trump transition team. According to reports, the content of 12 email accounts was handed over...

Multiple reviews of whether FBI agents’ political bias affected the Russia-Trump collusion case remain in their infancy, but investigators already have unearthed troubling internal communications long withheld from public view. We already know from FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok’s now-infamous text messages with his fellow agent and reported lover, Lisa Page, that Strzok — the man driving that Russia collusion investigation — disdained Donald Trump and expressed willingness to use his law enforcement powers to “stop” the Republican from becoming president. The question that lingers, unanswered: Did those sentiments affect official actions? Memos the FBI is now producing to the...

(CNN) — Fresh controversy swirled around former US national security adviser Michael Flynn Thursday after one report claimed he told the Trump transition team he was under federal investigation before he started in the role, and another said he opposed a military operation in Syria that Turkey would have opposed while he was secretly in its pay.

Omarosa Manigault, a first-season contestant on “The Apprentice,” has officially joined the Trump transition team, it was announced Thursday. Manigault has been placed on the transition executive committee, joining the likes of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Peter Thiel and a host of other loyalists. During the lengthy presidential campaign, Omarosa, who is usually introduced by her first name, was a forceful and effective surrogate, often appearing on TV to cheer on and defend Trump. She was spotted by reporters at Trump Tower this week, so her appointment is hardly surprising. Her precise responsibilities are not...

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s preparations to take over the government if they’re elected are now in high gear, and their transition teams are working out of the same building a block from the White House at 1717 Pennsylvania Ave. It’s the first time in history that two presidential campaigns have worked to set up their governments in miniature literally side-by-side, riding the same elevators to adjacent floors of the tony, marble-floored building as they plan to govern. Now that Clinton has announced her five-person, day-to-day transition team led by former Interior secretary and Colorado senator Ken Salazar and Trump has...

Casey Cooper is new to the bench, but he’s well-connected . Just three months into his tenure on the federal bench, and before his formal investiture ceremony later this week, newly minted — but well-connected — U.S. District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper has been handed one of the most high-profile and politically sensitive American terrorism cases in recent years ... Cooper, 47, was part of the Obama administration’s transition team and is one of the more connected people in D.C. legal circles, Marimow notes. His wife, Amy Jeffress, worked at the Justice Department as a national security adviser to the...

Donald Trump has tapped Chris Christie to lead his transition team, which would prepare the political neophyte turned presumptive GOP nominee for the White House if he wins in the general election. “Governor Christie is an extremely knowledgeable and loyal person with the tools and resources to put together an unparalleled Transition Team, one that will be prepared to take over the White House when we win in November,” Trump said in a quote released Monday morning as part of a campaign statement.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is creating a council to help ensure a smooth transition to his successor. Created by executive order, the White House Transition Coordinating Council will be led by Obama's chief of staff. Members include deputies to the chief of staff, the intelligence director, the budget director and the president's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser. The council's responsibilities include providing guidance to departments and agencies, working with the transition directors for the presidential candidates and holding emergency preparedness and response exercises.

Hey, it was just a harmless prank! No real harm done. Ha! Ha! That is the tone of The Atlantic magazine article explaining away the vandalism performed by the Clinton White House as it transitioned over to the incoming George W. Bush administration. The article is about how tough it is to transition from one White House administration to the next but the real purpose as we shall see is to slam Donald Trump for mishandling a transition that has yet to happen because he hasn't even been nominated yet. First author Russell Berman attempts to explain away a major...