Donald Trump has been slow to fill administrative positions that require Senate confirmation (and thus public scrutiny), but he’s quietly hired 400 “beachhead team” members “to serve as his eyes and ears at every major federal agency, from the Pentagon to the Department of Interior” – a rats’ nest of ex-lobbyists running agencies they used to lobby, campaign staffers being given cushy jobs, neo-nutjobs from the Breitbart depths who endorse birtherism and other, more exotic conspiracy theories, and a whole Mos Eisley Cantina’s worth of scum and villainy.
This motley crew was hired in secret with their identities kept under wraps until Pro Publica used public records requests to reveal their identities, down to little Danny Tiso, who just graduated from high school in 2015, but is now a senior manager at the Department of Labor, having filled the intervening time campaigning for one Donald J Trump (who campaigned on a pledge of “draining the swamp”).
Also included are the likes of Alexandra Campau, a healthcare lobbyist now fronting for the department of Health and Human Services; Justin Mikolay, former Palantir lobbyist, now installed at the DoD; and Chad Wolf, a former defense lobbyist now an official “advisor” to the TSA – they are part of a cohort of 36 registered lobbyists that are among the crop of gators that Trump brought to the swamp with him. That’s a big undercount of lobbyists, too: most lobbyists exploit loopholes that let them get away without registering.
