According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

Pence became the first sitting VP to speak at Washington's annual anti-abortion march, and later said, "America's Obamacare nightmare is about to end.” In December 2015, after candidate Trump called for a temporary halt to Muslims entering the U.S., Pence tweeted, “Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” Yet, when Trump, as president, signed an order banning the entry of Muslims from seven countries, Pence stood behind him, smiling and nodding approval.   read more

As assistant secretary for employment standards in the George W. Bush administration, Lipnic backed employers’ calls to weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act and pushed through a change in overtime policy that allowed employers to exempt more of their workers from earning overtime pay. As an EEOC member, she dissented in a decision that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sexual discrimination. She also voted against pay data requirements to curb discrimination.   read more

“After an extensive review process, I have determined that I will not be able to satisfy the Office of Government Ethics requirements without undue disruption and materially adverse divestment of my family's private financial interests,” said Bilden. He is the second Trump armed services secretary nominee to withdraw for financial reasons. Early this month, billionaire Wall Street trader Vincent Viola pulled out as nominee for secretary of the Army due to "insurmountable" financial challenges.   read more

Acosta's cases included lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy in a casino deal; and Jose Padilla, accused of planning a “dirty bomb” attack. Acosta also cut a deal with Palm Beach financier Jeffrey Epstein, a social acquaintance of Donald Trump, who was accused of operating an international sex ring involving underage girls. In the deal, Acosta turned prosecution over to the state of Florida, which charged Epstein with a relatively minor offense.   read more

That was the summer when someone at a July 4 weekend pool party pushed her backward into the pool, causing her to hit her head on a wall and to suffer a broken neck. She spent the next few years in recovery, “relearning every single thing that you had to do with a spinal cord injury,” she said. In 2012, Sheehy was named deputy assistant secretary of ODEP. In 2016, President Obama appointed her to be a member of the Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled.   read more

In the Bush Justice Dept's Office of Legal Counsel, Engel worked on Guantánamo detainee issues. Later as a partner at the Dechart law firm in Washington, he represented Republican governors in U.S. vs. Texas, in which those governors fought the implementation of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, an Obama program to delay some deportations of undocumented immigrants. He also represented those challenging the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act.   read more

Bilden remained in Hong Kong for 20 years, becoming a major player in bringing private equity investment to Asia. He opened HarboutVest offices in Tokyo in 2010 and Beijing in 2012. Back in the U.S. in 2016, he he sat on the board of the Naval Academy Foundation and the Naval War College Foundation, where he was the inaugural chairman of the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies Task Force. Bilden's nomination was a surprise, as Trump adviser Randy Forbes was the expected choice.   read more

In 1989, Wilkinson became a judicial law clerk to Eric Holder, who was at that time a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. In 1990, Wilkinson joined the criminal division of the U.S. Dept of Justice, where he worked as a trial attorney in the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section and the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. Three years later, he became special counsel to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (Holder), a position that lasted nearly four years.   read more

While Vitiello was in the Rio Grande Valley, the George W. Bush administration was working to complete a border fence in the region. The planned fence would have cut through the campus of the University of Texas-Brownsville, whose charter has a bi-national mission. School officials met with Vitiello to try to get some accommodation on the fence, but Vitiello told them the meeting was a waste of time. “He wanted to stop the conversation instantly,” said university consultant Putegnat.   read more

Smoot's desire to help those in need led her to become a public defender. When she saw an interview with then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on television, in which he said that attorneys who excel at defense work make the best candidates for prosecutors, she applied for one of the 15 open positions and landed the job. She later worked to establish the USPC Mental Health Docket, which provides non-violent criminal offenders who have mental health disorders with alternatives to incarceration.   read more

Perdue has a grasp on the Agriculture Dept, but the form it takes remains to be seen. While he was governor of Georgia, the state food safety budget was slashed by 29%. In 2006, Perdue paid $2 million for land near Disney World to a developer he’d put on Georgia’s economic development board. Perdue then got a bill passed, backdated to save him $100,000 in capital gains taxes on the land sale. During his re-election campaign, he pretended he didn’t know he'd benefit from the tax break.   read more

In 2010, Salzgaber received an appointment to the Senior Executive Service as deputy assistant inspector general for investigations. In that post, he headed the DHS OIG’s Investigative Field Operations Division, in charge of the agency’s investigative operations in 14 regional offices. In 2012, he became principal advisor to the Dept of Homeland Security. In 2015, Salzgaber was appointed deputy director of the U.S. National Central Bureau of INTERPOL.   read more

Donald Trump promised to deport undocumented immigrants and in Thomas Homan, now acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he has a man who won an award for deporting thousands of people. Trump tapped Homan to lead ICE in January 2017. At about that time, as ICE appeared to step up its pace of raids and deportations, Homan agreed to sit down on February 14 with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to address its concerns about the raids. He later backed out of the meeting.   read more

Harlow was commander of operation FALCON 2007, overseeing development of Toledo’s first fugitive apprehension team made up of numerous law enforcement agencies. Between 2008 and 2011, Harlow was chief of USMS’s Sex Offender Investigations Branch, for which he oversaw the National Sex Offender Targeting Center and the Sex Offender Apprehension Program. He additionally developed the USMS Behavioral Analysis Unit, which helps target fugitive and non-compliant sex offenders.   read more

The Trump administration added another member of the Goldman Sachs alumni association to its roster when it announced that financier Lewis Eisenberg, head of the Trump Victory Fund, would be the next ambassador to Italy. A former GOP finance chairman, Eisenberg resigned from Goldman Sachs in 1989 after a civil lawsuit accused him of harassing a former assistant, Kathy Abraham, after she tried to end a seven-year extramarital affair. Abraham later received a settlement and recanted her claims.   read more

In 2012, Bracey joined what was then a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She worked as senior counsel in its Office of Supervision Policy and was involved in student loan servicing, auto lending, and rulemaking. A year later, she was named the Bureau’s senior counsel and executive secretary, and then continued up the ladder to become counsel to the director and executive secretary. She held that post until her appointment at the Justice Dept the following year.   read more