Inside the conservative hunt for partisans in the federal government before Trump takes over

(CNN) — In mid-September, as tech billionaire Elon Musk intensified his efforts to elect Donald Trump as president, a wave of letters arrived at the Department of Transportation, asking the agency to turn over any emails and text messages that federal workers sent about the world’s wealthiest man and his sprawling technology empire.

The requests were like thousands of others sent in the past two years by Trump-allied groups seeking to identify perceived partisans within the federal government. Some have focused on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, others on employees who shared “off the record” information with reporters and on emails referencing “climate change.”

It’s a massive fishing expedition that has already sent a chill through federal agencies bracing for Trump’s second term.

With Trump set to return to the White House with a promise to shrink the federal government and eliminate civil servants seen as obstacles to his agenda, the groundwork laid by these groups could serve as a road map for a mass purging of personnel.

Unclear is whether the incoming Trump administration intends to utilize the work of these groups as the president-elect pursues a long-standing goal of eliminating disloyal career bureaucrats. A spokesperson for his transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

“We have a pretty good handle on where the problem sectors are, who the problematic individuals are and what the problematic tactics are,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, which is responsible for a substantial share of the requests. “We’ve been planning for some time what to do if there’s turnover in the administration.”

Howell estimates his group has submitted around 65,000 requests to federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act, a law that governs public access to records produced by the government. And he is not alone. America First Policy Institute, a group with close ties to Trump’s transition team, has also requested agencies turn over training materials about diversity programs and any records that outline all senior level positions.

Another conservative organization, the American Accountability Foundation, recently published the names of 60 “targets” in the Department of Homeland Security who the organization believes would stand in the way of Trump’s plans for large-scale deportation and other sweeping immigration policies. The list includes senior-level employees who donated to Democratic candidates or causes, previously worked for groups that advocate for more liberal immigration policies or posted on social media about their efforts to assist immigrants who arrived in the US seeking legal status.

“If the president wants to be able to execute on the agenda that the American people told them they want, they can’t have liberal activists in (Senior Executive Service) positions,” said Tom Jones, the conservative activist and former Capitol Hill aide behind the American Accountability Foundation.

Howell and Jones said they have not had direct conversations with either Trump’s campaign or people involved in the transition, but both expressed confidence that the incoming administration is clued in on their work. America First Policy Institute did not respond to requests for comment.

“We run in similar circles, and they’re aware of what we’re doing,” Jones said.

Trump as a candidate vowed to reinstate a 2020 executive order known as Schedule F, which gave him power to commence mass firings of federal employees who could be impediments to his agenda. Neither his campaign nor his transition team have said how he intends to put Schedule F in place and what effect it could have on the country’s 2 million federal employees working in the US and abroad.

While Trump distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation during the campaign over Project 2025 – the organization’s much-maligned blueprint for a second term – the organization remains a key resource for the transition team as it works to staff thousands of positions in Trump’s new government.

America First Policy Institute also has close ties to Trump’s transition. The chair of the organization’s board is Linda McMahon, the head of the Small Business Administration under Trump and the co-chair of his transition team. McMahon is also a potential candidate to serve as commerce secretary in a second Trump term.

On Wednesday, Trump stopped by an event held by the organization at his Mar-a-Lago club and briefly addressed the crowd, according to a visit posted online, and he spoke the next day at the AFPI gala.

The efforts have alarmed agency officials and unions representing federal workers. One source for a union representing Environmental Protection Agency workers characterized the effort as the potential weaponization of internal agency emails. In response, the source said that EPA employees are “putting as little as possible in any written form.”

The union for EPA employees has submitted its own requests for information to get names of EPA employees who may be at risk, but it has not received a response because the agency’s FOIA office has been inundated with requests from Trump allies.

In some agencies, submissions from Howell’s group make up the vast majority of the records requests they have received. The Department of Transportation, for example, has received about 1,600 FOIA requests through the first nine months of 2024, and about 1,075 came from three people all tied to the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, according to a CNN review of the agency’s FOIA logs.

In his hunt for alleged partisans, Howell has requested from multiple agencies records that might uncover conspiracies to subvert the president-elect’s expected purging by asking for emails that include “Trump” and “reduction in force.”

Many of the records requests remain unfulfilled, logs show. Howell said that agencies have stonewalled or delayed many of their FOIA letters, but that could change when a new administration comes in.

The EPA union source said their counter strategy now is a public relations campaign. They’re forging alliances with members of Congress and outside groups in hopes of bringing to light how Trump-aligned groups are already targeting federal employees and hoping public shaming and outrage may protect them.

“Make no mistake: our union will not stand by and let any political leader – regardless of their political affiliation – run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing about 800,000 workers, said in a recent statement.

The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project has released scores of documents and emails related to various controversies that have animated conservatives in recent years, including names of hundreds of people involved. However, it so far has not published a list of federal employees for the Trump administration to target, though Howell did not rule it out.

“It’s not our decision who gets hired and fired, and what we aim to do is make it transparent,” Howell said. “It’s my hope they’re subject to termination, and if you have shown a proclivity to hard left positions, you shouldn’t be working for the government.”

CNN’s Rene Marsh contributed to this report.

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