Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought and his nonprofit working to overhaul the government along conservative lines has been drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations and memos in preparation for a second Donald Trump presidential term, he outlined in secretly obtained recordings released Thursday.
Trump has disavowed any knowledge of such plans and said he does not even know the people involved, though Vought is said to be in line to serve as chief of staff if 45 is reelected and was the policy director for the Republican National Convention committee that penned the party’s official platform.
Furthermore, Vought told two undercover journalists in footage obtained by CNN, that Trump had given his blessing to Vought’s organization, the Center for Renewing America, and is “very supportive of what we do.”
He went on to describe how they were preparing to hit the ground running in the event that Trump wins in November.
“We’ve got about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature that are, we’re planning for the next administration,” he told the journalists working for the Centre for Climate Reporting, a British nonprofit. That ranges from dismantling federal agencies, which he dismissed as mere “bureaucracies,” to implementing “the largest deportation” in U.S. history, something Project 2025 has been very open about.
Trump’s assertions that he doesn’t know anyone in the organization and has nothing to do with its operations were “just very, very conscious distancing himself from a brand,” Vought said. “It’s interesting, he’s in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”
The video was recorded in secret and the journalists misrepresented themselves to gain access. In this case, Vought thought he was speaking to potential wealthy donors. Such deception tactics are against American journalism ethics, but the Centre for Climate Reporting said the practice is allowable in the U.K. press if it serves the public interest.
“We broadly follow the U.K.’s press regulator guidelines on this, which say that it is justified if it is in the public interest and not obtainable via other means,” Centre co-founder and director Lawrence Carter told CNN. “We therefore weigh the subject’s reasonable expectation of privacy with the public interest.”
The recordings came out just days after U.S. nonprofit ProPublica posted secret training videos apparently aimed at those wishing to serve in the new administration.
The project’s handbook covers nearly 1,000 pages, and at least 140 people who used to work for Trump are involved.
With News Wire Services
