Donald Trump aide Johnny McEntee rose from carrying the president’s bags to assume a powerful as an ultra-loyalist who oversaw purges at executive agencies meant to weed out ‘anti-Trumpers’ and boosted Trump’s election overturn effort, according to a new book.
McEntee, 31, a former University of Connecticut football quarterback, had premier access to Trump in the early days at the White House, acting as Trump’s ‘body man’ by carrying bags and other necessities.
He would later get booted by former chief of staff John Kelly after a background check turned up gambling issues.
It was during his second tenure, in January 2020, when McEntee began to amass more power as a Trump loyalty enforcer, according to an article in the Atlantic times with the release of Jonathan Karl’s new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
Director of the Presidential Personnel Office Johnny McEntee follows President Donald J. Trump as they walk to board Marine One and depart from the South Lawn at the White House on Monday, Aug 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. McEntee oversaw a team that sought to enforce Trump loyalty throughout the government, according to a new book by Jonathan Karl. Some Trump aides compared the tactics to the Gestapo
Efforts to police loyalty included cracking down on a housing aide who ‘liked’ a Taylor Swift post
One passage details an effort by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who demands to know from top Housing and Urban Development aide Andrew Hughes why a young assistant had liked’ a post by singer Taylor Swift.
The post encouraged people to vote, with a swipe it revealed an image of Swift holding cookies with the Biden-Harris campaign logo.
‘We really can’t have our people liking posts promoting Joe Biden,’ Meadows told Hughes, according to the book, even though the aide was a big Taylor Swift fan.
The demands for loyalty would become far more serious, as McEnttee took overthe Presidential Personnel Office that reached into all the top executive agencies.
The book describes White House chief of staff Mark Meadows lecturing a top agency official after a young aide ‘liked’ a political post by singer Taylor Swift
McEntee’s team of interns included a former Rockette and Instagram influencer
According to Karl, McEntee brought on a staff of young Trump activists who were ‘comically inexperienced.’
A senior official said he hired ‘the most beautiful 21-year-old girls you could find, and guys who would be absolutely no threat to Johnny in going after those girls.’
‘It was the Rockettes and the Dungeons & Dragons group.’
Karl notes that one of the hires was in fact a Rockette who performed at Radio City Music Hall’s finest in the 2019 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Karl’s new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show
He may have been referring to Katie Forss, whose LinkedIn page says she is a Radio City Rockette and executive assistant to the director of the Presidential Personnel Office in 2020. It says she was an intern for two months, from Jan-Feb. 2020 – the time McEntee returned. Between Feb. and Sept., she ‘provided support for the Director & managers in the selection of Presidential appointments and aided in communication to recruit candidates to serve the President in departments and agencies throughout the Executive Branch,’ landing at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she was a special assistant.
McEntee hired Instagram influencer Camryn Kinsey, who ‘was 20 and still in college when McEntee gave her the title of external-relations director. She had told an online publication that: ‘Only in Trump’s America could I go from working in a gym to working in the White House, because that’s the American dream.’
Her Instagram page shows her posed in front of Marine One and standing at the White House podium. She went on to join Trump-friendly One America News.
A senior official said he hired ‘the most beautiful 21-year-old girls you could find, and guys who would be absolutely no threat to Johnny in going after those girls’
Camryn Kinsey was 20 years when Johnny McEntee hired her as external relations director. ‘Only in Trump’s America could I go from working in a gym to working in the White House, because that’s the American dream,’ she said
Kinsey would later join pro-Trump One America News
McEntee played football for the University of Connecticut Huskies in college, then went on to become Trump’s ‘body man’ before overseeing the personnel office
His influence in the final days grew so substantial that aides referred to him as ‘deputy president’
McEntee’s influence became so outsized he ‘became the deputy president,’ a senior official Karl.
Trump aides compared his office to East Germany’s infamous internal police, the Stasi, as well as the Gestapo for its pursuit of potential ‘traitors.’
But a top level cabinet secretary called him a ‘f***ing idiot.’
His office assigned an aide, Josh Whitehouse, 25, to the Homeland Security Department.
After former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor wrote an op-ed bashing Trump, Whitehouse sought to remove his name from a plaque that listed prior top staffers. He got into a confrontation with Acting Sec. Chad Wolf, but ended up reversing metal plate his name was written on.
‘I am removing the name of this traitor,’ he told Wolf.
He then went on to the Defense Department and told people, according to Karl: “I’m going to the Pentagon to fire [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper and those deep-state bastards!”
Trump would in fact push out Esper in the last weeks of his tenure. The House Jan. 6th committee is probing the last-minute staff changes.
A McEntee team official, Josh Whitehouse, exploded at acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf over a plaque that listed the name of former HHS chief of staff Miles Taylor, who wrote an op-ed bashing Trump
President Donald Trump, with Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office John McEntee, walks to the Oval Office as he returns to the White House in Washington, DC, on September 11, 2020. McEntee dispatched aides to key agencies as Trump made a series of personnel moves in his final months in office
McEntee drafted a legal memo stating that Vice President Mike Pence would be following Thomas Jefferson’s example if he didn’t count votes from states where Trump claimed fraud
He went on to join Trump’s election overturn effort, penning memo on Pence authority that invoked Thomas Jefferson
McEntee also played a role in Trump’s election overturn effort, which ultimately prompted multiple officials to quit in the last days of the administration.
Part of the effort was pushing a legal theory – also embraced by outside lawyers in Trump’s orbit – that Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to accept votes certified by states when presiding over the counting of the electoral votes Jan. 6th.
‘When White House Counsel Cipollone told Trump that Pence did not have the power to overturn the election, McEntee drafted his own constitutional analysis, with an assist from his own rogue legal advisers, directly contradicting Cipollone and every other serious expert in the country,’ writes Karl.
But his analysis was ‘not surprisingly, deeply flawed,’ writes Karl.
Karl calls McEntee’s product – he is not a lawyer – an ‘absurd memo making the case that Pence would be following Thomas Jefferson’s example if he used his power to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election.
Pence did not embrace the theory – announcing on Jan. 6th that it was beyond the scope of his authority, infuriating Trump.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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