Three Trump administration officials begin work at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and arm of the Council for National Policy that was influential in staffing and directing policy for the Trump administration.
Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, and Mark Morgan were three of the biggest anti-immigration soldiers of the Trump administration.
A couple days later, Mike Pence announces that he, too, is joining The Heritage Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation is well-respected amongst political elites despite accepting money from ExxonMobil to deny climate change and actively working to spread conspiracies of election fraud.
Mark Morgan led Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) during his time in the Trump administration. Later in February, he announces that he is also joining the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), “a hawkish immigration group that advocates for border security and lower levels of immigration overall.” The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies FAIR as a hate group with “ties to white supremacists and eugenicists.”
Wolf and Cuccinelli’s efforts against constitutional rights are more egregious; they headed Homeland Security when the department sent federal law enforcement in to Portland to respond to protests. Many of those agents did not identify themselves as law enforcement and made illegal arrests of American citizens.
In 2019, Cuccinelli threatened to fire DHS analysts unless they fabricated intelligence findings to support Trump’s narratives.
Federal courts ruled that both Wolf and Cuccinelli were wrongfully or illegally appointed to their positions at DHS.
External Sources
Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, Mark Morgan
Mike Pence
Heritage & Climate Change
Heritage & Voter Fraud
FAIR
Southern Poverty Law Center
Photo: Public Domain