Tag: Trump appointing unqualified people

Trump’s pick for Pentagon watchdog prompts questions

Jason Abend has no experience running a large organization, unlike many previous Pentagon IGs, and no military background

President Donald Trump moved swiftly this month to replace inspectors general across the government. Now Trump’s nominees for these watchdog jobs face questions about whether they will bark when needed, especially if Trump wants silence.

Arguably the most important IG organization in the country is the Pentagon’s, which comprises some 1,500 people in dozens of offices around the globe who do audits and criminal probes in search of waste, fraud or abuse in a nearly $700 billion annual enterprise.

Earlier this month, Trump pushed aside the Defense Department’s acting IG, Glenn Fine — the most experienced IG in history and one who was widely well-regarded — and moved him to the No. 2 Pentagon IG job. Continue reading.

Trump official paid president’s campaign $744,000 for experts to amp up her ‘personal brand’: report

AlterNet logoIn April, President Donald Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma faced public backlash after a report detailed a $2.25 million contract she awarded to Republican consultants to bolster her own public image.

But the scandal may have been even worse than that. According to Politico, among the 40 outside contractors hired as part of this contract included “eight former White House, presidential transition and campaign officials for President Donald Trump” — who charged up to $380 per hour for “strategic communications” work and relied on the federal government’s convoluted contractor system to conceal what they were doing.

Among the contractors Verma hired were Marcus Barlow, her former spokesman when she was consulting for Mike Pence while he was governor of Indiana. Barlow’s contract allowed him to bill up to $425,000 in one year — which is more than twice the salary of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Also hired were Ken and Keith Nahigian, who worked for multiple GOP presidential campaigns and the Trump transition team, Brad Rateike, who advised the Trump campaign, and Maggie Mulvaney, a Republican fundraiser who is now working on Trump’s re-election team.

View the complete November 12 article by Matthew Chapman from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.