Pentagon suspends Trump's last-minute picks to defense advisory boards: report

The Department of Defense is taking action to prevent some of Donald Trump's last-minute appoints from occurring.

"The Pentagon has suspended the processing of a number of former President Donald Trump's last-minute appointees to defense advisory boards as the new administration looks to weed out loyalists to the former president. The move effectively prevents a number of Trump allies, including his 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandoski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie, from actually serving on panels tasked with providing advice to the defense secretary, at least for the time being," Politico reported Thursday.

"The effort is aimed at scrubbing the members of the advisory boards "'to determine if appointments were politically motivated," said one of the people. The freeze announced on Wednesday pertains only to appointees who have not yet been sworn in or have completed all the required paperwork, the people said. Several new board members, including Earl Matthews and Anthony Tata, were sworn in on Jan. 19 after pressure from the White House to push through as many appointees as possible before President Joe Biden's inauguration. But others, including Lewandowski and Bossie, were still undergoing a lengthy financial disclosure and security clearance process that normally takes weeks or months, according to the people familiar," Politico explained.