'One part grift and one part vengeance': Op-ed cries corruption over Trump transition team

Former President Donald Trump's refusal to meet routine deadlines foreshadows his willingness to embrace an alarming aspect of Project 2025 should he be reelected in November, a new analysis contends.

Trump's slow-walking of the presidential transition process to vet potential staffers and appointees suggests he means to force federal workers to do his bidding by dismantling key protections, Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton argued Friday.

"As with everything else associated with Trump, the whole project appears to be one part grift and one part vengeance with loyalists," Parton wrote. "The corruption that characterized Trump's first term is already evident."

Parton pointed to leaders of Trump's transition team and the policy platform their conservative think tank developed as the reason why the campaign is not taking advantage of money and essential services they could have accessed by meeting deadlines.

"It doesn't take a very stable genius to figure out why they are dragging their feet," Parton wrote. "Trump's campaign can avoid federal rules limiting private contributions to the transition process as well as ethics rules that bar conflicts of interest."

Conflicts of interest concerns are already being raised about Howard Lutnick, a financier reportedly raising concerns he'll insert profitable business allies into the second administration he's planning for the former president.

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“Totally sketchy,” was how one senior Republican official described Lutnick's actions to Politico this week.

The team also includes Linda McMahon, the America First Policy Institute leader accused of allowing the sexual abuse of young boys during her tenure at the World Wrestling Entertainment, as the Daily News reported Thursday.

"Such damming allegations would probably be cause for her resignation from any other presidential transition, but considering Trump's own history of sexual abuse it's unlikely that he would care about such mundane accusations," wrote Parton.

"It's par for the course in any Trump administration."

Parton argues Trump's retention of McMahon suggests the former president's dedication to her think tank's "America First Agenda" which calls for eliminating most of the civil service protections for federal workers by making them at-will employees.

"You can see why the campaign doesn't feel the need to bother with a traditional transition process," Parton concluded. "They are already vetting hundreds of MAGA faithful and planning to start dramatically expanding executive power the minute Trump takes power."