Donald Trump spent his final weeks in office trying (even harder than before) to foul the government, to flood the swamp he’d promised to drain and populate it with zombie crocodiles. President Biden is working swiftly to undo as much of that as possible by weeding out the people Trump had installed in government for no other reason than their personal loyalty to him.
The latest move is a pause on processing the paperwork for people Trump had named to defense advisory boards but who hadn’t completed the process and joined the boards. That includes former Trump campaign managers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie—because apparently having managed Trump’s campaign for a minute qualifies you to advise the defense secretary.
“The Secretary, as you would expect, is reviewing current policies in place across the Department to determine if any changes are necessary, to include the advisory boards,” a Pentagon spokesperson said in a statement. “No final decisions have been made with respect to board membership. But we will make the information available should that change.”
This puts Lewandowski and Bossie on hold, but three people were sworn into the Defense Policy Board the day before Biden was inaugurated, including someone who has claimed that Trump won “in a landslide” in 2020, and retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, whose appointment to a Defense Department job was held up last fall when it emerged that he had described former President Obama as a “terrorist leader.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin can get rid of these people if he wants, fortunately. For now, he can take his time to decide without having a large chunk of Trump’s political operation sitting in on his meetings.
Biden hasn’t wasted any time in some other areas, including cleaning house at the Voice of America, putting a last-minute political hire in what was supposed to be a nonpartisan job on administrative leave rather than allowing him to serve as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency, and filling slightly lower-level positions as quickly as possible to get the work in gear.