Republicans backing Donald Trump are threatening Deloitte, a consulting firm that is one of the federal government\u2019s largest business partners, with the loss of billions of dollars in contracts because an employee shared messages from 2020 in which GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance criticized the former president\u2019s record.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 27, Donald Trump Jr. exposed the employee\u2019s name and photograph to millions of people on social media, writing, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s time for the GOP to end Deloitte\u2019s taxpayer funded gravy train?\u201d Others \u2014 including Vance\u2019s chief spokesman and a Republican senator \u2014 circulated Trump Jr.\u2019s comments, and the conservative website Breitbart published a story naming the man and highlighting his job.<\/p>\n
Deloitte receives about $3 billion annually from federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense.<\/p>\n
Ethics experts said the episode is a potentially ominous preview of how a second Trump administration might use the enormous power the federal government wields over private industry to punish political acts by individual workers. Although federal contracting laws prohibit cutting off a business because of its workers\u2019 private political views, such threats could have a chilling effect, they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like this,\u201d said Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and former deputy chief counsel in the Office of Congressional Ethics, adding that the goal was probably to pressure Deloitte into firing the worker. \u201cYou can\u2019t imagine that if one employee out of thousands made a statement that offended an official, that then the government contracts would be in jeopardy.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sept. 27, The Washington Post published a report about direct messages Vance sent during the final year of Trump\u2019s presidency to an acquaintance over the social media platform then called Twitter. Among other remarks, Vance said in the messages that Trump had \u201cthoroughly failed to deliver\u201d on his economic agenda in the White House, and predicted he would probably lose the election to Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
The Post agreed before publication that it would not name the messages\u2019 recipient, Kevin Gallagher, because he was concerned about possible retaliation. However, Gallagher said The Post could identify him later if he experienced reprisals from Trump, Vance or their allies. The Post is naming Gallagher in keeping with that agreement. Gallagher declined to comment for this report.<\/p>\n
The episode is the latest bout of public threats from Trump\u2019s MAGA movement. The former president has threatened to use the Justice Department to jail his opponents, among other things, if he wins a second term. Many Trump supporters on social media have urged that Gallagher be fired.<\/p>\n
Deloitte declined to address questions about how it has handled the situation and whether Gallagher has been subject to any internal discipline.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis individual shared private personal messages on his own volition without the knowledge of Deloitte, which is a non-partisan firm,\u201d the company said in a statement. \u201cDeloitte is deeply committed to supporting our government and commercial clients and we have a long track record of doing so across parties and administrations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deloitte has a political action committee that in recent elections has distributed its spending across candidates in both parties. So far in the 2024 cycle it has given approximately $1.3 million to Republicans and $1.2 million to Democrats, the company said.<\/p>\n
Vance spokesman William Martin, who recirculated on his own X account Trump Jr.\u2019s post targeting Deloitte, said in a statement that Vance has not called for the company to lose its federal contracts and \u201chas no opinion on the issue.\u201d He also said that neither Vance nor Trump Jr. has explicitly called for Gallagher to be fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moment Kevin Gallagher chose to leak his private communications to The Washington Post, he went from a private citizen to a willing participant in the political arena,\u201d Martin said. \u201cWhen he made that decision, he dragged Deloitte Consulting into the political arena with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump Jr., through a spokesman, responded to questions for this report with a written statement calling a Post reporter a \u201cscumbag\u201d and asserting that there was nothing inappropriate about the social media posts targeting Deloitte\u2019s contracts.<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin Gallagher had a right to leak the communications, Washington Post had a right to print them and as a private citizen I have a right to speak my mind about where my tax dollars go,\u201d Trump Jr. said in the statement.<\/p>\n
The episode is the latest example of the ways in which Vance\u2019s prolific digital correspondence in the years before he became a politician has come back to haunt him.<\/p>\n
Vance initiated his conversation with Gallagher through a direct message on Twitter in October 2019, praising an essay Gallagher had written the previous year about the interplay between Catholicism and politics, according to the correspondence Gallagher previously shared with The Post. Vance, who had become a public figure and commentator after the publication of his best-selling memoir, was working at the time as a venture capitalist based in Cincinnati and had recently joined the Catholic Church. He wrote that Gallagher\u2019s piece \u201cwas really helpful to me as I thought about my own conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the following 11 months, the pair corresponded intermittently, mostly about politics and current events. In one early exchange, Vance asked Gallagher what he did for a living; Gallagher replied that he was a consultant who worked with investment managers. Otherwise Gallagher did not discuss his professional life in the messages, and at no point in the exchanges that were shared with The Post did he identify Deloitte as his employer or discuss his clients.<\/p>\n
Vance offered several opinions, notably about Trump, that contradicted the public stances he would adopt as a politician. In February 2020, Vance wrote that \u201cTrump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy).\u201d Trump\u2019s wealthy donors, he added, would probably remain loyal to him because he had served their interests in the White House.<\/p>\n
Vance has acknowledged criticizing Trump in 2016 but said he changed his mind after seeing Trump\u2019s performance in office. But the messages show Vance still disparaging Trump\u2019s record near the end of his first term.<\/p>\n
In June 2020, a few months before ballots were cast in an election that Vance later claimed was stolen by Democrats, he predicted Trump would probably lose to Biden. Vance also suggested in the messages that he had been offered and had turned down a position in the Trump administration; criticized Republicans for underestimating the harm caused by the coronavirus; and expressed openness to Medicare-for-all, the government-run universal health insurance proposal popular among progressive Democrats.<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s campaign has said his statement that Trump had \u201cthoroughly failed\u201d was intended as a critique of \u201cestablishment Republicans who thwarted much of Trump\u2019s populist economic agenda.\u201d The campaign did not respond to questions about his prediction that Trump would lose or his claim to have been offered a job. A Vance spokesman said that the senator\u2019s view on the coronavirus changed after 2020 and that Vance now thinks Medicare-for-all \u201cwould make health care worse for Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite their shared Catholic faith and intellectual interests, Vance often disagreed on political questions with Gallagher, who in his own messages criticized Trump and expressed support for some causes of the left. Vance nevertheless messaged Gallagher that he saw him as \u201can ally\u201d because of their mutual interest in improving conditions for workers and curbing the influence of rich corporations.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re playing a strategic game,\u201d Vance wrote in February 2020, \u201cthe same as me.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Post reporter made contact with Gallagher in late August this year while reporting on Vance\u2019s connections among conservative Catholic political theorists. Gallagher brought up the correspondence with Vance and later agreed to share it on the condition he not be identified as its source in The Post\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
Before publication, The Post sought comment from the Vance campaign, sharing the contents of the messages it planned to publish but withholding the name of the recipient and other identifying details. Martin, the campaign spokesman, wrote in an email to a reporter that Vance had identified Gallagher as the source of the correspondence. (After the article was published, Martin said his email had been intended as a warning that \u201cKevin was going to be publicly outed.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The Post did not confirm Gallagher\u2019s identity to Martin but did inform Gallagher that Vance had identified him and that his name could become public. Gallagher said he understood that risk.<\/p>\n
After the article was published, Breitbart posted an article naming Gallagher and stating that his \u201cactions could have potentially very serious consequences for Deloitte in the future should Trump and Vance win the election \u2014 or even if the Democrats win.\u201d It also quoted Vance\u2019s campaign and referred to emails the campaign had sent to The Post.<\/p>\n
Soon afterward Trump Jr. shared the Breitbart article on X, writing, \u201cWhy is an executive @DeloitteUS conspiring with the Washington Post to help Kamala Harris?\u201d<\/p>\n
In a follow-up post, Trump Jr. shared screenshots of a website displaying the total value of Deloitte\u2019s current U.S. government contracts and of Gallagher\u2019s bio page, including his photo, from the firm\u2019s website. He tagged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).<\/p>\n
Trump Jr.\u2019s comments were viewed by 2 million and reposted 13,000 times. Some on the platform said they would stop doing business with Deloitte and called on the company to fire Gallagher.<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin Gallagher FAFO!\u201d senior Trump adviser Jason Miller wrote five minutes later, using an acronym for \u201cf\u2014 around and find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days later Trump Jr. again posted the Breitbart article, writing, \u201cWe\u2019re not forgetting this.\u201d Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) shared that post, writing, \u201cThis is outrageous,\u201d and saying Deloitte \u201cshould immediately and publicly respond to this scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Johnson and Schmitt did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
During the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, Vance was asked about The Post\u2019s report. He said the messages didn\u2019t capture his more nuanced view of Trump at the time but made no reference to Gallagher, Deloitte or the pressure being applied to them.<\/p>\n
Deloitte probably would have a strong legal case against efforts to revoke its federal contracts because of Gallagher\u2019s action, said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at the George Washington University Law School. Under government procurement rules, only certain kinds of misconduct \u2014 such as fraud or tax evasion \u2014 can lead to a firm being barred from federal contracts, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the Trump Organization deciding not to do business with someone,\u201d Tillipman said. \u201cThere are rules in place that are designed to ensure the integrity and fairness of the federal marketplace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s messages with Gallagher ended in the run-up to the 2020 election. In one of their final exchanges \u2014 the same one in which Vance predicted Trump was on the verge of losing to Biden \u2014 he lamented that he had not persuaded Gallagher to take a more favorable view of conservative intellectuals who were bucking what Vance described as the Republican Party\u2019s libertarian-leaning economic orthodoxy. Earlier in their conversation, Vance had said he and others who challenged those views faced intense pushback.<\/p>\n
\u201cI continue to think you should be more charitable,\u201d Vance wrote, \u201cto people whose views actually cost them something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Republicans backing Donald Trump are threatening Deloitte, a consulting firm that is one of the federal government\u2019s largest business partners, with the loss of billions of dollars in contracts because an employee shared messages from 2020 in which GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance criticized the former president\u2019s record. On Sept. 27, Donald Trump Jr. exposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}