White House threatens to fire anyone who tries to quit

While the employment of Donald Trump and thousands of his political appointees will officially come to an end on Jan. 20 with the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, the Associated Press is reporting that White House personnel director John McEntee told departments to fire any political appointees discovered to be looking for a new job.

An unnamed White House source said that McEntee told department heads to get rid of any political appointees looking for their next jobs while Trump is still falsely claiming he has not lost the 2020 presidential election.

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign is telling its staff to keep up the fight for the White House, but it’s unclear whether those staffers will still be employed next week, CNN reports.

On Monday, leaders of the campaign reminded staffers that the election was not over and told them, “Stay in the fight!”

But the staffers, employed with contracts that expire on Nov. 15, have not been told whether the contracts will be extended.

“Hard for people to stay in the fight when they’ll be unemployed a week from today,” a campaign source said.

After a staff meeting, a campaign staffer printing their resume in the office was yelled at by an assistant to campaign manager Bill Stepien.

All this is happening as Trump and his allies mount an all-out legal battle to try to prevent the transition to a Joe Biden administration, filing lawsuit after lawsuit to toss out ballots and stop vote-counting based on unfounded claims of voter fraud.

The AP reported that a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that monitored the U.S. election found no evidence to support Trump’s claims about alleged absentee ballot fraud: “We looked into this,” said the mission’s head, German lawmaker Michael Georg Link. “We found no violations of the rules whatsoever.”

He added that Trump cannot stop the vote-counting, noting: “Responsibility for the count lies exclusively with states.”

Some GOP lawmakers are also pushing back against Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.

On Friday, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said, “There’s simply no evidence anyone has shown me of any widespread corruption or fraud.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted Thursday urging, “STOP Spreading debunked misinformation.”

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio issued a statement in which, while congratulation Trump on winning in his state, he said: “Under our Constitution, state legislatures set the rules and states administer our elections. We should respect that process and ensure that all ballots cast in accordance with state laws are counted. It’s that simple. I hope we can reach a final resolution as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile, President-elect Biden and his team are proceeding with work on his transition to the White House.

“The crises facing the country are severe—from a pandemic to an economic recession, climate change to racial injustice—and the transition team will continue preparing at full speed so that the Biden-Harris Administration can hit the ground running on Day One,” a source with the transition team told the Wall Street Journal.

The campaign’s “Build Back Better” website now includes information about the transition.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.