Senior U.S. diplomat for Asia Susan Thornton to retire in July
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The senior U.S. diplomat for Asia, Susan Thornton, will retire at the end of July, the State Department said on Saturday, in the midst of critical negotiations with North Korea and China.
Questions have long been raised about whether Thornton, 54, who was picked for the post by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, would be replaced under his successor, Mike Pompeo. Her appointment had been opposed by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Top Justice Department Lawyer Resigns, Latest To Step Down
Scott Schools, a top aide to the deputy attorney general, is planning to leave the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with his decision.
The job title for Schools — associate deputy attorney general — belied his importance as a strategic counselor and repository of institutional memory and ethics at the DOJ. Schools has played a critical, if behind-the-scenes, role in some of the most important and sensitive issues in the building.
The official White House list comes out every June, Flynn was fired before June and the Mooch never made the list because he didn’t actually officially begin working for the White House office. They are still counted in the posts above. For every high level staffer that leaves their post three to four mid level staffers also change positions or leave the White House. This was my attempt to find all those staffers to get a better picture of the overall turnover rate.
“I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!”
Who is now the Acting Director of the EPA? Meet former coal industry lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler.
WASHINGTON — The departure of Scott Pruitt, the scandal-plagued former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, means that the agency will be led in the coming months by Mr. Pruitt’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who shares Mr. Pruitt’s zeal to undo environmental regulations.
But unlike Mr. Pruitt — who had come to Washington as an outsider and aspiring politician, only to get caught up in a swirl of controversy over his costly first-class travel and security spending — Mr. Wheeler is viewed as a consummate Washington insider who avoids the limelight and has spent years effectively navigating the rules. For that reason, Mr. Wheeler’s friends and critics alike say, he could ultimately prove to be more effective than his controversial former boss in implementing President Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
On Thursday afternoon, President Trump tweeted that he had accepted Mr. Pruitt’s resignation and that Mr. Wheeler would take over as acting director of the agency.
Mr. Wheeler is expected to serve in an acting capacity as head of the E.P.A. until President Trump nominates a new agency chief, who must then be confirmed by the Senate. That process could take months and potentially stretch past the November midterm elections.
After Scott Pruitt, next his spokesperson leaves - Jahan Wilcox.
The departure of Jahan Wilcox, a veteran political operative who handled communications for the Environmental Protection Agency, follows the resignation of former Administrator Scott Pruitt last week.
President Donald Trump’s legislative affairs director is heading for the exits just as the White House gears up for a major Supreme Court nomination battle and approaches a daunting midterm election landscape.
Marc Short, one of the administration’s longest-serving senior aides and a frequent spokesperson for the president on television, is planning to depart by July 20, according to a person familiar with the plans.
More and more I’m getting the sense that these folks are bolting because they don’t want to be there when everything hits that fan – which may be just weeks away.
Hard to say, clearly the worst part about working in Trump’s White House is that you’re surrounded by people who would want to work in Trump’s White House.
About 20 career staff have quit the U.S. Treasury Department’s international affairs unit in less than a year, draining resources from a key office in the Trump administration’s escalating trade battles with China and Europe.
The wave of departures began in September, shortly after David Malpass – a champion of President Donald Trump’s protectionist message – took over the division. The unit employed about 200 people at the end of the Barack Obama administration.
A top National Security Council official who skirmished with White House aide Stephen Miller and other immigration hardliners was forced out this week, the latest staffing change at the NSC since President Donald Trump named John Bolton his national security adviser in March.
Jennifer Arangio, a senior director in the NSC division that deals with international organizations, was let go Thursday, according to a former White House official and a former NSC staffer. The former NSC staffer said Arangio was escorted off the premises and told her services were no longer needed.
The former White House official said Arangio’s just-the-facts approach put her at odds with Miller, a top Trump aide who favors restricting immigration, and others involved with the Domestic Policy Council, especially on the issue of refugees.
She had to go. She wasn’t towing the line on the Administration’s draconian immigration policies.
And while I’m not inclined to update the absurdly long master list, I am reminded of a New Yorker piece from last week, in which Susan Glasser described this as possibly “the worst-run White House of modern times,” in which “no one is really in charge.”
Late last month, Martha Joynt Kumar, a scholar who has tracked White House staff during the past six Presidencies, reported that the Trump White House has an astonishing turnover rate of sixty-one per cent so far among its top-level advisers. No other Administration she has tracked comes close. […]
The Trump Cabinet has been similarly tumultuous: Pruitt’s departure, on Thursday, adds to a list that already included a fired Secretary of State, a fired Secretary of Health and Human Services, and a fired Veteran Affairs Secretary, as well as a vacancy that was created when Kelly moved from the Department of Homeland Security to replace Trump’s fired first chief of staff, Reince Priebus. All together, Trump’s Cabinet has the fastest turnover rate of any Administration in a hundred years. Tenures are so short that Kumar is now reporting on the turnover among the second and third waves of aides. […]
It might seem self-evident, but it bears repeating: Trump, whatever else he accomplishes, will certainly go down in the record books as the worst manager of the White House in modern times. And not only is this state of affairs not normal, it’s no way to run even a small organization, never mind a country. A senior European official recently told me that every time he shows up at the White House there is a new aide to meet with him, because the last one he sat down with has since been cashiered or fled. As each successive wave of aides comes and goes, what little institutional knowledge remains in the White House is further diminished. In such circumstances, of course, nobody knows who’s in charge or what the policy is.
Two HHS political appointees who worked on President Donald Trump’s campaign were forced out this week in response to a series of inflammatory tweets and other behavior detailed in a recent POLITICO report.
Tim Clark, the agency’s White House liaison, is resigning and will depart the agency in the coming weeks, according to an internal email sent to staff and shared with POLITICO. He has been replaced by Trent Morse, who joined HHS from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Gavin Smith, a policy adviser who used his Twitter account to publicly mock elected officials and reporters, also departed HHS this week. Three individuals with knowledge of the situation said he was escorted from the building, but an HHS official said on Friday that Smith resigned.
Unfrigginbelievable. Our election systems are under attack, the mid-terms are in 18 weeks, and Jeffery Tricoli just walks away from the task force charged with protecting us?
If FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is ulitmately responsible for this task force, can’t get it together to protect the foundations of our democracy, he should step aside and let someone else do it. His oversight has been lackluster and ineffectual. We need a dynamo leading the charge to harden our election systems. But, instead, we have this:
The task force’s responsibilities include coordinating activities between the FBI and state, federal and private organizations, according to the [Wall Street Journal]. However, sources told the Journal that the group has not made much progress.
“So far there has not been a lot of substance yet from the task force,” a congressional intelligence panel staffer told the Journal.
Super hard to believe…and that there is absolutely no muscle put into the election probe is beyond all of us, right?!
I subscribe to WSJ (when there are the super deals) and am putting their article into this response, because they have a paywall. However, they are speculating as well. The timing of this Electoral task force - started in January, 2018, and McCabe was fired in 3.16.18, with Christopher Wray taking over 6.18 it might seem that FBI was in a bit of turmoil too.
WSJ article
By Dustin Volz
July 14, 2018 10:00 a.m. ET
42 COMMENTS
A senior FBI official overseeing a government task force that addresses Russian attempts to meddle in U.S. elections has left the government for a job in the private sector, a departure that comes just months ahead of the 2018 midterm contests.
Jeffrey Tricoli had been coleading the FBI foreign influence task force until June, when he left government work for a senior vice president job at Charles Schwab Corp. , the company confirmed.
Mr. Tricoli, an 18-year veteran of the FBI who became a section chief of the bureau’s cyber division in December 2016, didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to his personal email and LinkedIn account. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Tricoli’s status, saying the Bureau doesn’t discuss personnel matters.
The reason for Mr. Tricoli’s departure wasn’t clear. But it adds to questions among some tech companies and lawmakers about how much the administration, and the task force in particular, are doing to protect future elections from Russian meddling.
This comes as the potential threat from foreign interference was underscored by a new indictment Friday from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, charging 12 Russians with a widespread conspiracy to steal thousands of emails from Democratic Party organizations and then ensure they became public in ways that would embarrass the Clinton campaign.
Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and author of a book about information wars on social media, said the Trump administration has shown little interest in addressing Russian meddling, leaving the FBI’s efforts to tackle foreign influence “reactive” instead of anticipatory.
The FBI, in a statement, said the task force has been forging ahead since it was created last year by Director Christopher Wray, though the Bureau declined to provide details.
“The FBI takes any effort to interfere with our democratic institutions extremely seriously,” it said. “For that reason, last year, Director Wray announced the Foreign Influence Task Force. Since its creation, the FITF has been an active, forward-looking task force.”
By bringing in representatives of FBI units and coordinating with state, federal and private organizations, the task force allows the Bureau “to share information and protect our democratic institutions from foreign influence,” the FBI said.
It wasn’t clear if a replacement for Mr. Tricoli has been selected. In January, Mr. Tricoli said publicly he was leading the task force alongside an unnamed counterpart in the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
Consider that Chris Wray’s role at the bureau was a tumultuous time at the FBI.
Is that the right kind of person to take on the most fraught job in Washington? If confirmed, Wray would become director at a tense time for the bureau. Trump has called the probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia “fake news” and “a witch hunt.” Critics say it’s anything but, while rank-and-file FBI agents are frustrated that their work is now perceived wrapped up in politics, not only because of the Russia investigation but also because of the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Then there are the usual stressors of serving as the nation’s top law enforcement official, overseeing some 35,000 employees and 50,000 investigations each year, most of which do not involve the 2016 election.
Despite his sterling reputation, Wray risks getting involved in the most intractable political fight in decades. “There’s an element of, Wow, what is he getting into?” says Jim Franco, a former college friend and roommate.
Or, as Roth puts it: “Would I do it [become FBI director]? Not at all. Would I recommend that anybody do it? No.”
