A key author of a controversial blueprint for a second Donald Trump administration said he maintains close contact with Trump, despite the former president’s disavowals of his work.
Russell Vought, who helped write the Project 2025 policy agenda that includes the mass firing of federal workers, said he’s kept close ties to Trump since serving as the former president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“I remember walking into our last day in office and told him what I was going to do. So, he’s very supportive of what we do,” Vought told an undercover reporter and an actor from the Centre for Climate Reporting, a British investigatory outlet.
Vought said his right-wing think tank, the Center for Renewing America, has been drafting hundreds of executive orders that could be used to enact mass firings and deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally. He said he would have no problem funneling the material to Trump.
“There are people like me that have his trust that will be able to get it to him in whatever position we’re at,” he said. “The relationships will be there. The trust level will be there.”
Project 2025 is a book-length policy roadmap for a second Trump term spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, with chapters authored by different contributors. Vought wrote a chapter on reforms for the executive office of the president.
Democrats have highlighted Project 2025’s proposals for restricting access to abortion, including medication abortion, and for replacing federal workers with Trump loyalists.
Trump has insisted that the authors of Project 2025 have no sway with him even though many of them, like Vought, are former members of his administration.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump wrote on his social media website last month. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
On Thursday, a Trump campaign spokesperson said in an email that “only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term.”
“President Trump personally led the effort to establish 20 promises made to the forgotten men and women across our nation, as well as RNC Platform ― these are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term,” the Trump campaign spokesperson said.
The Centre for Climate Reporting tricked Vought into sitting for an interview by hiring a paid actor to pose as a potential donor to his organization. (American journalists generally consider it unethical to gain information by deceit.)
A spokesperson for the Center for Renewing America claimed nothing Vought said was revelatory.
“Would’ve been easier to just google to ‘uncover’ what’s already on our website & in countless media interviews,” the spokesperson said on social media.
It’s not clear if Vought had previously said, however, that he was drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations and secretarial memos that he would deliver to a Trump transition team in such a way that they could not be uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act Request.
But it’s certainly true that Trump’s ties to Project 2025’s authors have been clear all along. The Associated Press previously reported Vought drafted a “180 day playbook” for the early period of a second Trump administration and that he would likely be appointed to a high-ranking position if Trump wins the presidential election in November.