Pentagon halts Trump appointments to advisory boards

The move effectively prevents a number of Trump allies, including Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, from actually serving on panels.

By LARA SELIGMAN

01/28/2021 04:42 PM EST

The Pentagon has suspended the processing 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.

The move effectively prevents a number of Trump allies, including his 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie, from actually serving on panels tasked with providing advice to the defense secretary, at least for the time being.

The news came in an email to advisory board members on Wednesday. The message was obtained by POLITICO and confirmed by two people familiar with the discussions.

The effort is aimed at scrubbing the members of the advisory boards “to determine if appointments were politically motivated vice professionally made,” said one of the people.

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, according to the people familiar.

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Biden administration halts effort to install Trump loyalists on Pentagon advisory boards

By Dan Lamothe
1/28/2021, 8:03:58 p.m.

The Biden administration has halted an effort to install several Trump loyalists on Defense Department advisory boards, Pentagon officials said Wednesday, as the new administration considers a series of unusual appointments that were made in the waning days of the Trump administration.

At least temporarily, the decision affects appointees that include Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, both of whom served as campaign managers for former president Donald Trump. They were named to the Defense Business Board in December, as the Trump administration also abruptly dismissed other members with a form letter from what historically had been a nonpartisan panel advising the defense secretary.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is weighing his options, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Wednesday night.

“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,” Kirby 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.”

A senior defense official familiar with the halt, first reported by Politico, said Wednesday night that several appointees the Trump administration named had not yet completed their paperwork to join a board.

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