House Democrats say administration is pushing out State Dept. staffers not loyal to Trump
Top House Democrats are accusing the White House and State Department of forcing out administration officials not considered sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump ’s agenda.
Citing emails provided by a whistleblower, Reps. Elijah Cummings , D-Maryland, and Eliot Engel , D-New York, the ranking members of the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, wrote to White House chief of staff John Kelly and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan raising questions about what they see as an apparent effort to target career civil servants at the State Department.
The State Department confirmed it had received the letter Thursday afternoon and "will comply with Congress' request," according to spokesperson Heather Nauert, who said she had never heard of outside groups pressuring the department to making staffing changes: "This is the first I've heard of it in this letter."
A number of emails, reviewed by ABC News, focus on former State Department official Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career official who worked on the Iran nuclear deal under President Obama at the State Department and on the White House National Security Council.
Nowrouzzadeh was the subject of a March story from a conservative outlet describing her as a “trusted Obama aide” who was “burrowing into the government under President Trump.”
She wrote to Brian Hook, her supervisor and director of the secretary’s policy planning staff, to push back on the story from the Conservative Review.
“I am and have been a career civil servant for nearly 12 years now,” she wrote in her email to Hook. “I began government service in the Bush Administration at DOD/NSA after graduating college and have focused on Iran in various capacities ever since. I’ve adapted my work to the policy priorities of every administration I have worked for.”
Nowrouzzadeh asked to meet with Hook to discuss the story and said she was worried about her safety. Hook forwarded her note to other Trump appointees, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson 's deputy chief of staff Christine Ciccone, his deputy Ed Lacey, and Matt Mowers.
“I know she is, in fact, a career civil servant,” Lacey replied, adding that she served on the Obama NSC and promoted and defended the Iran nuclear deal “with enthusiasm.” In another email, he refers to Nowrouzzadeh as one of a handful of "Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump's foreign policy agenda."
In a subsequent email, Julia Haller, formerly the State Department’s White House liaison, wrote that it would be “easy to get a detail suspended,” and claimed Nowrouzzadeh was born in Iran and “cried when the President won.”
The Connecticut-born Nowrouzzadeh, currently a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, was later removed from her assignment on the State Department’s policy planning staff in a manner that was “not in accordance with that which was explicitly stated in my MOU [Memorandum of Understanding]," she wrote to State officials in an email regarding a Politico story about her reassignment.
She did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
The emails also appear to reveal that conservatives outside the administration were in touch with State Department and White House officials with concerns about career staff.
David Wurmser, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney , emailed the Conservative Review story about Nowrouzzadeh to Trump adviser and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich , who forwarded it along to Margaret Peterlin, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s chief of staff.
“I think a cleaning is in order here,” Wurmser wrote to Gingrich. “I hear Tillerson has been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind…”
The emails also identify several White House officials, including Deputy White House Counsel Makan Delrahim, who were aware of the story and communicating about Nowrouzzadeh. He had received a note with the story from a judicial strategy distribution list from Barbara Leeden, a conservative activist.
Nowrouzzadeh was one of several officials viewed with suspicion in the early days of the Trump administration.
In one email to himself titled “Derek notes,” a reference to National Security Council Senior Director Derek Harvey, according to a congressional aide, Hook listed several other officials and notes about their loyalty, and described one as a “turncoat” who is “fully political.”
In their letter, Cummings and Engel have asked the State Department and White House for transcribed interviews with White House and State Department officials regarding Nowrouzzadeh’s detail and reassignment, along with relevant documents and communications.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During the briefing with reporters at the State Department, Nauert defended career employees as "extremely professional" and "almost blind to politics."
"They may not always like the policy that they are asked to advance on behalf of this administration and the American people, but my personal experience has been that people have done that and handled it in a very professional matter," she said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-democrats-administration-pushing-state-dept-staffers-loyal/story?id=53779575
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
"Meet Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a pro-Iran Deal Obama-era State Department staffer. Wrote this. Regardless how you feel about Trump’s Iran policies, we should all be able to agree that having her working in the Admin, working against president’s priorities is a bad idea. Time to go.".......David Reaboi
This should have been done on day 1. Notice the article refers to a whistle blower - I'm sure. These Obama holdovers are trying to subvert what this President wants done. They must be removed!
Loading up the State Department with sycophants may make Trump happy because he will have a group that tells the Dear Leader that he is always right on every international decision. However that makes it terrible for the country if he does not have the man/child have an adult in the government, especially in international affairs where he has no experience and has shown himself to be very vulnerable to pageantry influence. He needs (very badly) and adult to tell him "NO!" sometimes and it must be someone he will listen otherwise we will have a child running the whole country, especially with McMaster leaving. We must never forget that, basically, Donald Trump is a very spoiled child, not an adult and must approached and dealt with as such if we going to have a chance to get through this disaster.
Never ending uninformed left wing psychobabble.
Why should Trump keep these holdover spies for Obama. That are pretty close to have committing treason. They need to outed and fired.
You do realize you sound like a lunatic right?
He shouldn't keep them. There are so many of them as far back as the Clinton Administration. I wonder if anyone would expect Obama to have people working for him whose sole purpose was to stonewall his policies. His entire administration was filled with Leftist in powerful positions. Obama may have been more of a centralist himself, but his policies were more to the left. He received more support from Wall Street than all the other candidates combined when he ran for office. Then he filled his cabinet with them. Face it, Obama left the Democrat Party in shambles and broke, but he has gone on to prove his whole Presidency was a con against his supporters.
Spy to who? A bit paranoid aren't you? Obama is not the President any longer so what can they spy to him about? Falling for the whole "Deep State" garbage are you?
Isn't that exactly what Obama did ? Isn't the State Department supposed to be working for the current President's goals ?
We must never forget that, basically, Donald Trump is a very spoiled child, not an adult and must approached and dealt with as such if we going to have a chance to get through this disaster.
That is your opinion & the reason you didn't vote for him. Others have duly noted how well the trained professionals have done with North Korea, Iran and China. They voted for Trump.
Well, that, and his name is not Hillary.
We must keep in mind that this goes hand in hand with "fine" career civil servants like Lois Lerner and Andy McCabe.
Hopefully we'll see her back on the stand one day. With the video story and the IRS scandal not being exposed before the election, he was able to get elected. It's really corrupt when a President's corruptness is so encompassed throughout his administration to allow him to obstruct 501Cs from getting approval and not allowing them to have a fair deal in the election of the President. Having that fair deal is what separates us from third world countries.
Sad to see conservatives embracing the idea that federal employees should be loyal to the president rather than the country.
Depends on which country, America or Russia. Right now Conservatives seem to be leaning to the Russian side.
In terms of policy, it is unethical for his staff to undermine him. It's that simple.
Can't get anymore simple than that. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the other presidents did combined. Whistleblowers usually expose corruption.
In terms of policy, it is unethical for his staff to undermine him.
Except that there is zero evidence that any of them are. Well except in the paranoid fevered minds of a few FOX commentators.
Eric Holder, Lois Lerner, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Valerie Jarrett among others.
What did they do to oppose the entire country? Nah, don't bother answering, I'm sure you have saved all those spam emails, just waiting to cut and paste.
Take Lois Lerner as an example. Obviously, she abused her authority at the IRS to target conservative groups, by either denying them tax-exempt status outright or delaying that status until they could no longer take effective part in the 2012 election. Talk about meddling in an election! You could say she destroyed the Tea Party.
And because Obama's Justice Department was allowed to do the investigating, they got away with it.
Great point.
Holder as AG was putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
Wow, this has been debunked years ago. Not only did they target more liberal groups, based on their name, the only denial of status they issued was for a liberal group.
No conspiracy here, IRS targeted liberals, too
As IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups, It Went After Progressives Too
Says, you? Great documentation on your claim, BTW. Hard to argue with all the facts and links you posted to support it.
THEY ADMITTED IT:
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday apologized for targeting groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, confirming long-standing accusations by some conservatives that their applications for tax-exempt status were being improperly delayed and scrutinized.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/irs-admits-targeting-conservatives-for-tax-scrutiny-in-2012-election/2013/05/10/3b6a0ada-b987-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html?utm_term=.a65e21127399
Your response is meaningless, and does not address my post.
I never denied that they targeted groups based on their name, my claim is that they targeted both liberal and conservatively named groups, and the only one they denied was liberal.
That was part of weak coverup afterward - to claim that a couple of liberal groups were also denied status, when in fact they paralyzed the Tea Party before the 2012 election.
Trump wants loyalty because honesty to trump is like kryptonite to superman.