Post-election firings
After vote counts showed a Biden victory, Trump engaged in what has been called a "post-election purge", firing or forcing out at least a dozen officials and replacing them with loyalists.
[203] Secretary of Defense
Mark Esper was fired by tweet on November 9.
[204][205] Undersecretary for Defense
Joseph D. Kernan and Acting Undersecretary for Policy
James H. Anderson resigned in protest or were forced out.
[203] The White House sought to learn the names of political appointees who had applauded Anderson upon his departure, so they could be fired.
[206] The DOD chief of staff, Jen Stewart, was replaced by a former staffer to Representative
Devin Nunes.
[203] On November 30, Christopher P. Maier, the head of the Pentagon's Defeat ISIS Task Force, was ousted and the task force was disbanded; a White House official told him that the United States had won the war against the Islamic State, so the task force was no longer needed.
[207]
Trump's allegations of election fraud in battleground states were refuted by judges, state election officials, and his own administration's
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
[99] After CISA director
Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's voting-fraud allegations, Trump fired him on November 17.
[208][209] Three other Department of Homeland Security officials –
Matthew Travis, CISA's deputy director. Bryan Ware, CISA's assistant director for cybersecurity, and Valerie Boyd, the DHS's assistant secretary of international affairs – were also forced out.
[203]
Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator of the
United States Agency for International Development, was abruptly fired on November 6; she had prepared a transition manual for the next administration. She was due to become acting administrator of the department on November 7. Firing her left the position of acting administrator vacant, so that Trump loyalist
John Barsa could become acting deputy administrator.
[210][211]
Career climate scientist
Michael Kuperberg, who for the past five years has produced the annual
National Climate Assessment issued by
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was demoted on November 9 and returned to his previous position at the Department of Energy. Several media outlets reported that David Legates, a deputy assistant secretary at NOAA who claims that global warming is harmless, would be appointed to oversee the congressionally mandated report in place of Kuperberg, based on information obtained from "people close to the Administration", including
Myron Ebell, the head of President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team and director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
[212] As of May 18, 2021, the Biden administration reappointed Kuperberg as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
[213]
On November 5,
Neil Chatterjee was removed from his post as chair of the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
[203]
On November 11,
Lisa Gordon-Hagerty resigned from her posts as
Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and administrator of the quasi-independent
National Nuclear Security Administration, reportedly due to longstanding tensions and disagreements with
Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette.
[214]
In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order that created a new category of federal employee,
Schedule F, which included all career civil servants whose job includes "policymaking". Such employees would no longer be covered by
civil service protections against arbitrary dismissal, but would be subject to the same rules as political appointees. The new description could be applied to thousands of nonpartisan experts, such as scientists who give advice to the political appointees who run their departments.
[215] Heads of all federal agencies were ordered to report by January 19, 2021, a list of positions that could be reclassified as Schedule F. The
Office of Management and Budget submitted a list in November that included 88 percent of the office's workforce.
[216] Federal employee organizations and Congressional Democrats sought to overturn the order via lawsuits or bills. House Democrats warned in a letter that "The executive order could precipitate a mass exodus from the federal government at the end of every presidential administration, leaving federal agencies without deep institutional knowledge, expertise, experience, and the ability to develop and implement long-term policy strategies".
[217] Observers predicted that Trump could use the new rule to implement a "massive government purge on his way out the door".
[218]
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