The director of the Office of Presidential Personnel has instructed the heads of Executive branch agencies to fire any political appointee who is seeking another job outside of the administration, Forbes reports.
It’s routine for political appointees to seek outside employment at the end of one term, either because of the stress of their positions or because they want to move on to capitalize on their new-found experience in the government.
The order, by John McEntee, impact 4,000 political appointees around the government, mandating that they stay in their government jobs to show their loyalty to Donald Trump as he attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Should the Trump campaign lose all the appeals, recounts and court cases attempting to disenfranchise voters–as is expected–these individuals will have to look for a job as of January 20th anyway, and many are preparing for that inevitability.
McEntee has gotten into hot water in the past for his handling of political appointees in government. In March 2018, he lost his security clearance and then his job as Trump’s “body man” when it was disclosed that he had lied on security clearance application about excessive gambling debts and a gambling problem.
He rejoined the administration earlier this year in February as director of Office of Presidential Personnel, an agency that was plagued with accusations of placing ill-equipped people in key Executive Branch positions. He unilaterally decided to shuffle hundreds of people to new jobs, mostly without informing the heads of the agencies or the Cabinet secretaries, leaving many positions unfilled or filled with people with even less experience than those in there before.