Presidential Personnel Office   
FREE NEWS LINKS

photo of U.S. Capitol Building  
      HOME 
  SEARCH

Updates & changes ongoing ....

---- Although this site is https-secure, we cannot guarantee that it or any provided links are safe; be sure your antivirus and other security systems are up to date.

Also see: Administration; Caroline Wiles; Taylor Weyeneth; Walter Shaub; Carl Higbie;

             
Jump to:    2018;   2019;   2020;

Undated:  The White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO, sometimes written as Office of Presidential Personnel) is the White House Office tasked with vetting new appointees.[1][2] Its offices are on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.[2] The PPO is one of the offices most responsible for assessing candidates to work at or for the White House.[3]

The PPO is currently made up of about 30 members, which is only about one third of its usual staff. This office is responsible for approximately 4,000 jobs, of which 1,600 require Senate approval.[4] The White House Presidential Office recruits candidates to serve in departments and agencies throughout the Executive Branch. It presents candidates for PAS positions to the Senate which must also be approved by the President of the United States.[5] The mission of this office is to provide the president with the best applicants possible for presidency-appointed positions. Lastly, it also provides policy guidance for federal department and agency heads on conduct for political activities.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Presidential_Personnel_Office

Dated Thursday March 1, 2001: Recruiting Executive Branch Leaders: The Office of Presidential Personnel

Despite the demise of the spoils system about which Garfield was complaining, the demand for government jobs after each presidential election continues to be a hallmark of American politics. It took the assassination of President Garfield by one of the vultures, deranged office-seeker Charles Guiteau, to galvanize Congress to pass the Pendleton Act in 1883 establishing the merit system of civil service. But remaining atop the executive bureaucracy was and is a layer of political officers, a layer that has grown thicker in recent years

Back to top


The Constitution vests the “executive power” in the president and commands that “the laws be faithfully executed.” To fulfill this responsibility each president appoints the major officers of the government. The government’s ability to carry out its primary functions depends crucially on capable civil servants, whose effectiveness is intimately tied to the quality of the leadership of the executive branch, that is, presidential appointments.

Each new president who comes to office appoints thousands of men and women to help lead the executive branch. While the career civil servants who work under their direction are recruited on a continual basis by the Office of Personnel Management and individual agencies, the leaders themselves are recruited by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which is formed anew by each president. The obligations of the OPP are threefold—to serve the nation by recruiting executive branch leaders, to serve the president by finding qualified loyalists, and to shepherd nominees through the sometimes treacherous appointment process.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/recruiting-executive-branch-leaders-the-office-of-presidential-personnel/

-- 2018 --

Back to top


January 22:
Trump's 24-year-old drug appointee has inaccuracies in his resume

Taylor Weyeneth, who Trump appointed to the White House drug policy office had a resume filled with misinformation

He claimed that he had worked as a legal assistant at the law firm O’Dwyer & Bernstien until April 2016, even though he had been discharged in August 2015 for repeatedly failing to show up for work.

Weyeneth, who currently serves as deputy chief of staff at the White House drug policy office, also had to repeatedly revise how his resume represented his work as a volunteer at a monastery in Queens. He initially claimed he had volunteered there for 275 hours, then 150 hours and finally omitted all references to that monastery. He also claimed that he had served for three years as vice president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, even though a fraternity spokesman said he had only been in that position for a year and a half.

Weyeneth has yet to revise his resume to reflect that he has not yet completed his master’s degree coursework at Fordham University. The resumes all claim that he has his master's degree from there.

The Trump White House has repeatedly struggled with a series of appointments that have seemed to go to absurdly underqualified or downright unqualified candidates. The most conspicuous example of this has been in the realm of judicial appointments, with nominees like Matthew Petersen, Jeff Mateer and Brett Talley, according to The New York Times
https://www.salon.com/2018/01/22/trumps-24-year-old-drug-appointee-has-inaccuracies-in-his-resume/

March 30: From the start, Trump’s appointments lagged far behind those of prior administrations. By June 20, 2017, the Senate had confirmed only 44 appointees, compared with 170 for Obama and 130 for Bush in the same time period, according to Pfiffner.

“It is a disaster,” Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, told The Post.

One of the newcomers was a former Trump campaign worker named Caroline Wiles. Wiles, then 30, is the daughter of Susan Wiles, a prominent lobbyist and political operative in Florida. Caroline Wiles joined the Trump administration as a deputy assistant to the president and director of scheduling in the White House. News accounts said she was one of six White House staffers dismissed for failing FBI backgrounds checks, but the White House official would not confirm that. She was eventually moved to the PPO, where she was made a special assistant to the president, a post that typically pays $115,000.

Back to top


The younger Wiles has an unusual background for a senior White House official. On a résumé she submitted to the state of Florida, she said she had completed course work at Flagler College in Florida. On her LinkedIn page, she simply lists Flagler under education. A Flagler spokesman said she never finished her degree.

“She did not continue her enrollment or graduate from here,” spokesman Brian Thompson said. 

Wiles has had a string of political jobs, including work at her mother’s lobbying firm and as a campaign aide for candidates her mother advised, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Trump. She also worked for an education organization that helped provide health care to needy students.

Over the years, she has had multiple encounters with police. In 2005, she had her driver’s license suspended for driving while intoxicated, police records show. In 2007, she was arrested for driving while intoxicated and arrested for passing a “worthless check.” She was found guilty of a misdemeanor for driving under the influence. The charge related to the bad check was dropped in a plea agreement.

Wiles did not respond to requests for interviews.

In an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity, a White House official praised Caroline Wiles, the special assistant to the president, saying she had demonstrated her competence as a scheduler and organizer during the Trump campaign.

 “We do feel confident in her ability,” the official said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/behind-the-chaos-office-that-vets-trump-appointees-plagued-by-inexperience/2018/03/30/cde31a1a-28a3-11e8-ab19-06a445a08c94_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5ccb227c5529

March 30: Another special assistant to the president is Max Miller, 29, a Marine reservist and former Trump campaign worker…Miller said he attended Cleveland State University from 2007 to 2011. A Cleveland State spokesman confirmed that Miller, who previously attended other schools, graduated in 2013… In 2007, he was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after punching another male in the back of the head and running away from police, police records show…In 2009, he was charged with underage drinking, a case that also was later dismissed under a first offenders’ program. The following year, he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge related to another altercation in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. That episode was related to a fight involving Miller shortly after leaving a hookah bar at about 2 a.m. one morning. During the fight, Miller punched through a glass door, cut his wrist and left a trail of blood as he wandered off, a police report said.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/vodka-chugging-20-somethings-are-vetting-the-white-house.html?gtm=top&gtm=top

Back to top


March 30:
Remember Taylor Weyeneth? He was a 24-year-old on the rise, the deputy chief of staff at the White House drug policy office who had a glittering resume that made it seem only fair for him to land such a cushy gig.

Except, as it turned out, Weyeneth had lied about a number of details on his resume: Whether he has completed his Masters coursework at Fordham University, the length of time he had spent as a legal assistant at the law firm O’Dwyer & Bernstein, the duration of his tenure as vice president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, whether he had ever volunteered at a Queens monastery.

In January Weyeneth was let go, according to The Washington Post, but there were still questions about how someone as unqualified and demonstrably dishonest as him was able to get hired in the first place. Was it a fluke occasion in which someone dropped the ball?

A piece of that puzzle may have fallen into place on Friday, when The Washington Post reported that the Presidential Personnel Office — which is responsible for finding and vetting thousands of political appointees — is understaffed and run by young people who treat the office like their own personal frat house.

Bear in mind: This is an office responsible for filling more than 4,000 government positions, with more than 1,200 of those requiring approval from the Senate.

As Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, told the Post, "No administration has done it as poorly as the current one."


Just as troubling as the low quantity of appointments, though, is the fact that so many have been low quality. Someone like Weyeneth pales in comparison to Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL who Trump appointed as the Chief of External Affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service. It later turned out that Higbie had a long history of making misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic and racist comments, which ultimately led to his resignation.

Of course, the worst appointment of all may be a candidate with no governmental experience whatsoever, a long history of alleged sexual misconduct, a business track record that has led to thousands of lawsuits, more racist and sexist comments than are easy to record and a resume that had as its most recent highlights a stint as a reality TV star.

Good thing that person doesn't have too much power, right?

https://www.salon.com/2018/03/30/the-white-house-personnel-office-is-basically-a-frat-house/

Back to top


April 2: New report helps explain Trump World’s many vetting failures

There are 652 key positions in the executive branch that require Senate confirmation, and as of this morning, Donald Trump’s White House hasn’t nominated anyone for one-third of those posts. Making matters slightly worse, when the president does choose people for vacancies, it often seems as if the White House hasn’t made any serious attempt at vetting these nominees before they reach Capitol Hill for consideration.

And why is Team Trump failing so spectacularly in this area? The Washington Post answered that question in amazing detail over the weekend, taking a closer look at Trump’s White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) and its role “hobbling the Trump administration’s efforts to place qualified people in key posts across government.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/new-report-helps-explain-trump-worlds-many-vetting-failures

-- 2019 --

Back to top



-- 2020 --

Back to top






 Webpage visitor counts provided by



 

 

copyr 2018 trump-news-history.com, Minneapolis, MN