Trump allies threaten Deloitte contracts after employee shares Vance chats

Republicans are targeting $3 billion in federal contracts after a consultant disclosed messages unconnected to his work.

By Peter Jamison. The Washington Post. October 7, 2024.

Republicans backing Donald Trump are threatening Deloitte, a consulting firm that is one of the federal government’s largest business partners, with the loss of billions of dollars in contracts because an employee shared messages from 2020 in which JD Vance, now the GOP vice-presidential nominee, criticized the then-president’s record.

On Sept. 27, Donald Trump Jr. exposed the employee’s name and photograph to millions of people on social media, writing, “Maybe it’s time for the GOP to end Deloitte’s taxpayer funded gravy train?” Others — including Vance’s chief spokesman and a Republican senator — circulated Trump Jr.’s comments, and the conservative website Breitbart published a story naming the man and highlighting his job.

Deloitte receives about $3 billion annually from federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense.

Ethics experts said the episode is a potentially ominous preview of how a second Trump administration might use the enormous power the federal government wields over private industry to punish political acts by individual workers. Although federal contracting laws prohibit cutting off a business because of its workers’ private political views, such threats could have a chilling effect, they said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and former deputy chief counsel in the Office of Congressional Ethics, adding that the goal was probably to pressure Deloitte into firing the worker. “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.”

On Sept. 27, The Washington Post published a report about direct messages Vance sent during the final year of Trump’s presidency to an acquaintance over the social media platform then called Twitter. Among other remarks, Vance said in the messages that Trump had “thoroughly failed to deliver” on his economic agenda in the White House and predicted he would probably lose the election to Joe Biden.

The Post agreed before publication that it would not name the messages’ recipient, Kevin Gallagher, because he was concerned about possible retaliation. However, Gallagher said The Post could identify him later if he experienced reprisals from Trump, Vance or their allies. The Post is naming Gallagher in keeping with that agreement. Gallagher declined to comment for this report.

The episode is the latest bout of public threats from Trump’s MAGA movement. The former president has threatened to use the Justice Department to jail his opponents, among other things, if he wins a second term. Many Trump supporters on social media have urged that Gallagher be fired.

Deloitte declined to address questions about how it has handled the situation and whether Gallagher has been subject to any internal discipline.

“This individual shared private personal messages on his own volition without the knowledge of Deloitte, which is a non-partisan firm,” the company said in a statement. “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.”

Deloitte has a political action committee that in recent elections has distributed its spending across candidates in both parties. So far in the 2024 cycle, it has given approximately $1.3 million to Republicans and $1.2 million to Democrats, the company said.

Vance spokesman William Martin, who recirculated on his own X account Trump Jr.’s post targeting Deloitte, said in a statement that Vance has not called for the company to lose its federal contracts and “has no opinion on the

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Episode 3015 - October 11 - Tiếng Anh - Các đồng minh của Trump đe dọa - Vina Technology at AI time