Allies of Donald Trump are threatening a major consulting firm with billions of dollars in lost contracts because an employee shared private messages that J.D. Vance sent him criticizing the GOP presidential candidate, the Washington Post reported Monday.
Deloitte, which is one of the biggest companies doing business with the government, gets about $3 billion from federal agencies.
The employee, Kevin Gallagher, received the messages in 2019 and passed them on to the Post in September.
The demand that his employer be punished, first voiced by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and since shared by multiple MAGA figures, has shocked ethics experts. Federal laws ban cutting off a business because of the political views of workers.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and former deputy chief counsel in the Office of Congressional Ethics, told the Post.
“You can’t imagine that if one employee out of thousands made a statement that offended an official, that then the government contracts would be in jeopardy.”
The messages sent to Gallagher by Vance, who is now Trump’s vice presidential running mate, included comments that Trump had “thoroughly failed to deliver” on his economic plans and suggested that he would lose the 2020 election.
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Trump Jr. shared Gallagher’s name and identity of social media, stating, “Maybe it’s time for the GOP to end Deloitte’s taxpayer funded gravy train?”
The call has been taken up by Vance’s chief spokesman William Martin and senior Trump adviser Jason Miller, both of whom shared Trump Jr.’s post, and at least one Republican senator, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who wrote, “We’re not forgetting this.”
“This individual shared private personal messages on his own volition without the knowledge of Deloitte, which is a non-partisan firm,” a Deloitte statement read.
“Deloitte is deeply committed to supporting our government and commercial clients and we have a long track record of doing so across parties and administrations.”
Martin told the Post that Vance himself has not demanded the loss of government contracts, saying he “has no opinion on the issue.”
But he added, “The moment Kevin Gallagher chose to leak his private communications to The Washington Post, he went from a private citizen to a willing participant in the political arena.
“When he made that decision, he dragged Deloitte Consulting into the political arena with him.”
Trump Jr. reportedly responded to calls from the Post by calling a reporter a “scumbag” and claiming that there was nothing wrong with his demands that Deloitte be targeted.
“Kevin Gallagher had a right to leak the communications, Washington Post had a right to print them and as a private citizen I have a right to speak my mind about where my tax dollars go,” he said.
The Post said Vance contacted Gallagher via Twitter after Gallagher wrote an essay looking at the connection of Catholicism and politics, the Post reported. The pair kept in communication for 11 months.