The Pentagon sent an email to advisory board members on Wednesday ordering the suspension of a number of former President Donald Trump’s last-minute appointees to defense advisory boards as the new administration looks to weed out loyalists to the former president, Politico Reports.
The email, which was obtained by Politico and confirmed by two people familiar with the discussions, announced that effective immediately, “all appointments, reappointments and renewals” to the boards would be suspended “pending a thorough review by the new Administration.”
The order effectively prevents a number of Trump allies, including his 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandoski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie, from actually serving on panels tasked with providing advice to the defense secretary.
The move is aimed at scrubbing the members of the advisory boards “to determine if appointments were politically motivated vice professionally made,” one of the people said, according to the news outlet.
According to the people familiar with the decision, “the freeze announced on Wednesday pertains only to appointees who have not yet been sworn in or have completed all the required paperwork, the people said. Several new board members, including Earl Matthews and Anthony Tata, were sworn in on Jan. 19 after pressure from the White House to push through as many appointees as possible before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. But others, including Lewandowski and Bossie, were still undergoing a lengthy financial disclosure and security clearance process that normally takes weeks or months, ” the report says.
