Who are these people? What kind of a person feels confident enough to do something like this? Are they all malignant narcissists?
The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.
Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top Justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud, the people said.
Stirrup is accused of approaching staffers in the department demanding they give her information about investigations, including election fraud matters, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
The effort came as Trump continues to level baseless claims that he won the election and alleges without evidence that massive voting fraud was responsible for his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
Stirrup had also extended job offers to political allies for positions at some of the highest levels of the Justice Department without consulting any senior department officials or the White House counsel’s office and also attempted to interfere in the hiring process for career staffers, a violation of the government’s human resources policies, one of the people said.
The Justice Department declined to comment. Attempts to reach Stirrup for comment were not immediately successful.
On Thursday, Trump appointed Stirrup to be a member of the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy, according to a White House press release.
[…]
Stirrup, who previously was a central figure in the Trump administration’s push for hard-line immigration policies, technically still remains in her position after being placed at the Justice Department by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.
Apparently, this is something that’s been happening all across the government. Trump has placed these liaisons into agencies and having them report back to the White House rather than their own agencies. Even Ben Carson got angry about it when it happened at HHS, apparently over this same person, Helen Stirrup, who was assigned there before she went to DOJ. And guess what else?
Shortly after the election, the presidential personnel office had also instructed the liaisons to fire any political appointees who were looking for jobs while Trump refused to accept the election results. Trump’s term ends at noon on Jan. 20. Several thousand political appointees across the government will see their jobs end by that date.
The White House personnel office has been headed by former Trump personal assistant John McEntee, who has renewed Trump’s push to rid the administration of those deemed “disloyal” to the president.
I can’t recall who said this but I thought it was a good way of putting it: Trump doesn’t want loyalty, he wants fealty. Fealty is the feudal obligation by which a vassal was bonded to his lord and that’s exactly how Trump sees the relationship. If it means breaking the law to serve him, so be it.