via WordPress http://ift.tt/2f8kzFX
Washington (CNN)The presidential transition of Donald Trump has started to lay its foundation for moving forward after days of overhaul and uncertainty paused work to build out the President-elect’s administration.
On Thursday afternoon, the White House confirmed it had received necessary paperwork from the Trump transition to allow staff members to begin moving into key federal agencies as part of the process to prepare to take over the government, a step that had been stymied by confusion about who would be leading the effort.
The first time there was a printed agenda was at one of the first senior staff meetings Sunday evening, a transition official said. The gesture was seen as a message to everyone that there needs to be an order first before moving to the big things.
Confusion at the outset
Christie had been chairman of the transition leading up to the election and had built out a robust team of staff dedicated to agency engagement, policy development and developing and vetting a cabinet.
But on the Thursday after the election, the Trump team met with Christie to go over the transition memo, which included staffing and cabinet positions for the President-elect’s administration. Trump’s team considered the memo a non-starter because it reflected the Washington establishment, including lobbyists, a source said.
Christie was called in on Friday, demoted and marginalized. He was told that this did not reflect the future Trump administration — that it wasn’t what Trump campaigned on and it didn’t “drain the swamp.”
It was after that meeting that Pence was elevated to take charge of the transition and effectively was put in a position to start all over.
Pence on Tuesday moved to ban lobbyists from the transition — though it was initially unclear in the first few days what that meant.
CNN obtained an organizational chart of the transition’s staff from before the announcement, and at least eight agency leads had been a registered lobbyist, though some had already been let go of the transition for other reasons. On the policy side of the transition, a review of the chart showed that eight out of 17 names listed had been registered lobbyists at one time.
On Thursday, transition officials told the press that lobbyists on the transition were being asked to sign affidavits that they had deregistered as lobbyists before they could continue working with the transition, and that any former lobbyist that joined the administration would be prohibited from lobbying for five years after leaving the transition.
But not all sources familiar with the transition said the narrative was entirely accurate.
Trump himself defended the lobbyists serving with his transition in a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday.
“That’s the only people you have down there,” when asked about the number of lobbyists on his transition. “Everybody’s a lobbyist down there … But everybody that works for government, they then leave government and they become a lobbyist, essentially. I mean, the whole place is one big lobbyist.”
He said the goal would be to end the system over time, adding: “I’m saying that they know the system right now, but we’re going to phase that out.”
Focus on Christie’s role
A source close to Christie and the transition said the early transition process didn’t have a choice but to hire lobbyists, and that Christie was a convenient fall guy to blame.
The source said some Washington Republicans who joined the transition pre-election were making sort of “back-door bets” to “hedge” their future, meaning they could work on the plans for the Trump administration without tying their career to his campaign. “That backfired,” the source said, meaning the individuals involved are now being forced to choose between their current job status and continuing work on the transition and, possibly, the administration.
The phenomenon of Republicans wanting to have it both ways with Trump, and a “paucity of people to pick” from, led to many lobbyists being on the team. Thus Christie had an “imperfect situation to work with which was in conflict with the campaign post-election,” the source said.
That is being “reconciled” now, the source added.
Leaks that Christie was pushed out because of lobbyists’ involvement came after reports that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was rubbing allies the wrong way in efforts to purge the transition team of Christie associates, per other sources.
The source close to Christie said it could be strategic to spin a narrative that Christie was too reliant on lobbyists and not delivering, saying, the story “has been leveraged to deepen the wound — particularly in the New York media market.”
Christie himself, once rumored to be a leading contender for a number of Cabinet positions before convictions were handed down to some of his former top aides in the Bridgegate trial, said Thursday he would not be serving in the administration.
“For everyone worried about what I’m going to do, and what job I should take and where I should live — let me give you all an update. I have every intention of serving out my full term of governor and I have no reason to believe as we stand here today that I will do anything other than serve out my full term as governor,” Christie said in a news conference in New Jersey on Thursday.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2glWikM
The post Donald Trump’s transition moves to right the ship appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
No comments:
Post a Comment