Trump allies threaten Deloitte contracts after employee shares Vance chats
Source: Washington Post
Trump allies threaten Deloitte contracts after employee shares Vance chats
Republicans target $3 billion in federal contracts after a consultant discloses messages unconnected to his work.
Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance speaks during a campaign event at Radford University in Radford, Va., on July 22. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
By Peter Jamison
October 7, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Republicans backing Donald Trump are threatening Deloitte, a consulting firm that is one of the federal government's largest business partners, with the loss of billions of dollars in contracts because an employee shared messages from 2020 in which GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance criticized the former president's record.
On Sept. 27, Donald Trump Jr. exposed the employee's name and photograph to millions of people on social media, writing, "Maybe it's time for the GOP to end Deloitte's taxpayer funded gravy train?" Others -- including Vance's chief spokesman and a Republican senator -- circulated Trump Jr.'s comments, and the conservative website Breitbart published a story naming the man and highlighting his job. ... Deloitte receives about $3 billion annually from federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense.
Ethics experts said the episode is a potentially ominous preview of how a second Trump administration might use the enormous power the federal government wields over private industry to punish political acts by individual workers. Although federal contracting laws prohibit cutting off a business because of its workers' private political views, such threats could have a chilling effect, they said.
"I've never seen anything like this," said Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and former deputy chief counsel in the Office of Congressional Ethics, adding that the goal was probably to pressure Deloitte into firing the worker. "You can't imagine that if one employee out of thousands made a statement that offended an official, that then the government contracts would be in jeopardy."
{snip}
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.
By Peter Jamison
Peter Jamison is a reporter on The Post's political enterprise and investigations team.follow on X @petejamison
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/07/vance-messages-deloitte-retaliation/
I went to Breitbart so that you don’t have to.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/09/27/exclusive-deloitte-consultant-behind-ethically-questionable-leak-of-jd-vance-communications-to-washington-post/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Bend the knee or you will pay.
The last thing 'fat don' and J Dumb want is someone holding a light on what they're doing when the cameras are off. 
in case it's not clear to anyone: the employee did not disclose anything from or pertaining to his employer. The messages were private, between the couch-*er and the person who happened to work for Deloitte. The messages were not work-related. The messages did not originate from a Deloitte account.
red don and his henchmen are gangsters.