A Leaky Foundation
Highlights from the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Personnel Database
Welcome back to KTB.
For the past three years, the Heritage Foundation has collected the names of wannabe Trump appointees. (The Heritage Foundation is the far-right think thank that wrote Project 2025.) Each wannabe filled out a questionnaire, and his or her name and responses were added to Heritage’s “Presidential Personnel Database.”
Last week, that database was leaked.
You can read about the leak here. And you can download the database here.
KTB has begun to sift through the database, which includes 13,726 rows of data. Each row is an individual’s name and that individual’s answers to the questionnaire, which included several “short essay” questions.
The individuals in the database include far-right think tankers, politicians, professionals, and appointees from the first Trump Administration (as well as many random Trump supporters with no relevant experience). The short essays are full of all the usual MAGA tropes (e.g. “woke” this, “CRT” that), fawning praise for Donald Trump, and lots and lots of grievance toward the government.
Today, KTB is going to call out a few of the individuals in the Heritage database - those individuals with more familiar names or those who might be especially upset to have their careerism exposed and their words quoted.
Have MAGA, will travel
Thomas Fugate is in the database. He is the 22 year old who Trump appointed to oversee terrorism prevention programs - the kid with the arched eyebrow. Thomas’s short essays praise Richard Nixon, go on and on about how much he hates pornography (TMI bro…), and offer this hymn to Trump:
Donald Trump will always be the greatest inspiration to me of my time, and I mean that genuinely. … This man put it all on the line for us time and time again. Before he even won the Presidency he was illegally spied on by Obama. Then after he won, fake scandal after fake scandal was devised to bring him down, and two impeachments were launched against him. Now they're trying to sue him for everything he's got on false charges. …
That kind of tenacity and willpower to go through not just the highs but also all of the incredible levels of stress and the lows is truly inspirational to me. ... He is a man of the people and will always continue to inspire, and one day he will be a legend.
A legend. Wow.
Elias Irizarry is also in the database and, like Thomas, also very wordy. You may have heard of Elias because he ran for a state leg seat after…well…his short essay explains:
I was arrested for misdemeanor trespassing related to January 6th. … We spent about 20 or so minutes inside [the U.S. Capitol building], didn't break or hurt anyone, and respected and complied with law enforcement.
However for three years we were targeted by the federal government under the Biden Administration. I even received a job at the US Department of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, had an approved security clearance (even despite my J6 issues), and was 10 days away from starting the job when I found out that the White House personally got involved and forced me out, and I wasn't even given permission to appeal.
Yup, Elias was a January 6er (and in case you couldn’t guess, the details he gives diverge from documented facts, so don’t trust his narrative). Well done, Elias: being a J6er is standout experience for a job in the Trump Administration!
Or…maybe it’s not so standout: two other January 6ers are also in the Heritage database. One of them is Daniel Morrissey who got 45 days in jail.
The other is Mark Finchem (Mark didn’t actually enter the Capitol, so he wasn’t arrested). Mark is from Arizona and is a member of the Oath Keepers militia. He also peddles various conspiracy theories and is a QAnon follower.
In 2022, Mark ran for Secretary of State. He lost, a defeat that his short essays blame on “fraud including sovereign fraud [whatever ‘sovereign fraud’ is] that both law enforcement and the judiciary refused to address.”
Two years later, Mark ran for state senate - and won. Hey Senator, do your constituents know that you want to abandon them for a better gig in DC?
I’d like to ask the same question to three other Arizonans: State Representatives Alexander Kolodin, Leo Biasiucci, and Walter Blackman. They are in the Heritage database. So are State Rep Steven Sainz from Georgia, State Rep Chris Banning from Oklahoma, and New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Kanitra.
So much for looking out for your districts, huh guys?
KTB readers, do you remember the Ben Franklin Foundation? It’s that semi-secret club of far-right officials at the State Department that KTB mentioned in a post about Tibor Nagy. Of the 67 fellows listed on BFF’s website, at least 18 of them filled out a questionnaire for the Heritage Foundation’s database.
They include Al Gombis who, in his short essays, tastefully compares vaccination requirements to the Fugitive Slave Act; Patrick Slowinski whose short essays praise Donald Trump and Jim Jordan for stopping “years of Democrat destruction to our nation”; and Paul du Quenoy who wrote on the “woke takeover of education” - and, ominously, how he “favor[s] the strong use of state power” to reverse it.
But the BFFer who wrote the most disturbing words is Simon Hankinson:
Florida has been a beacon in a red sea of woke nonsense since [Ron DeSantis] took office. There are other solid governors, but he is the most aggressive in taking the fight to the enemy [the bold is KTB’s emphasis].
The enemy?
Hey Tibor, if you’re reading this, could you go remind Simon that his fellow Americans aren’t “the enemy?” Thanks, bro.
Michael Gates and Tiberius Davis are two attorneys who are in the database. Michael’s job seeking strategy was unabashed butt-kissing: his short essays celebrated Trump’s “leadership, strength, valor, and even heroism in his fight against the deep state.” Tiberius’s strategy was extremism and transphobia: “abortion is…a disease on our moral center. … Abortion and transing children should be banned outright.”
Both strategies paid off: both Michael and Tiberius are now Trump appointees. Even though Trump is not valorous, abortion is not a disease, and “transing” is not a thing, both Michael and Tiberius landed positions at the Justice Department.
Perhaps the most notorious individual in Heritage’s database is Ella Maulding. Ella is something of an alt-right “influencer” who often pops up on X/Twitter, Tik-Tok, YouTube, and Instagram. She is a Christian nationalist; she just adores Nick Fuentes; and she is proudly bigoted toward every minority group you can think of.
Ella’s short essays aren’t short: they are long, exhausting diatribes. An excerpt:
Our governance, laws, and cultural norms should seek to…hold fast to Biblical truth. Christian governance shall [should?] legislate morality whilst defending and promoting Christianity in all aspects of American civic, social, and private life. …
Civilization is passing away right before our very eyes. Birth rates are collapsing below replacement levels. Sexual immorality, recreational drug usage, and the mass murder of innocent life are popularizing [sic] and becoming [the?] cultural standard. Christianity is being distorted and demonized as hate speech. Orchestrated by the deep state of anti-American elite, power has been weaponized against the American people.
Very bleak, very angry, very MAGA.
Ella’s short essays also denounce “rabid homosexuality and transgenderism…and cultural degeneracy”; and like Thomas Fugate, she wrote copious, rambling, and icky words about how much she hates pornography which she believes is ruining all the “young men who are supposed to be on the forefront of saving our country.”
But the most vile thing Ella writes is this one sentence:
Demographic replacement has made our country unrecognizable due to the influx of foreign nationals and the sterilization of American citizens.
Yup, Ella wants to stop the Great Replacement, a racist conspiracy theory peddled by the craziest fringes of MAGA. Ella, a piece of advice: sharing that particular career goal, even with Trump supporters, might hurt your job prospects…
…or maybe not, since I do hear that the Office of Remigration is hiring…
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