President Donald Trump has repeatedly said some employees in the federal workforce are Obama holdovers working against his agenda. Now a report from a government watchdog group suggests he's right.
The Government Accountability Office found 78 Obama appointees have successfully converted or "burrowed" into career jobs with the federal government.
“We’re seeing a weaponization of the federal bureaucracy against conservatives,” says Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation. “Think Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal of a few years ago, this is what the Obama regime wanted to do.”
This is something that is technically legal, if given permission by the Office of Personnel Management. But seven of Obama's appointees did so without approval.
Phillips says the only way to stop the leaks and undermining going on in D.C. is by abolishing the practice entirely.
“If you abolish civil service this doesn’t become an issue because when the new guy comes in he can fire these appointees,” he says. “As long as we have civil service these people are protected and we’re never going to be able to shrink the size of government.”
Currently, Homeland Security has the highest number of conversions with nine, followed by eight in the Justice Department and six in the Department of Defense.