Politico Oped Urges Federal Workers to Resist Trump from Inside Administration

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump raises his fist as he depart
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Politico published an opinion piece Sunday from a former attorney of Bill Clinton and Brett Kavanaugh accuser, “pleading” with government employees to keep their jobs to fight the incoming Trump administration.

Max Stier, the president and CEO of civil service-focused nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, put up the piece, titled “Dear Federal Workers: Don’t Quit,” on the site.

“Over the next few weeks, U.S. civil servants will spend the holidays wrestling with a tough choice: Stay in your jobs and work for a president who openly disdains you and might try to fire you — or quit,” wrote Stier, a lawyer who previously represented former President Clinton during the Whitewater investigation. “I have already heard from many of you who would rather try your luck on the job market than wait for President-elect Donald Trump’s promised purge.”

“I am asking you — pleading with you: stay. Your decision isn’t just about your career, or a single president. It’s part of a larger war, one waged throughout American history, over what the federal government can and should be.”

Going on to lament how Trump will not “make it easy” for government bureaucrats to do their jobs by “slashing” their “vital roles,” the op-ed argued that they must “weather the storm.”

“If you head for the exits now, every American will suffer,” Stier wrote, before concluding that unelected federal workers are “the lifeblood of our democracy.”

In September 2019, the New York Times revealed allegations made by Stier against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh:

A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier; the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode.

However, former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said that Stier never told his committee, which was overseeing Kavanaugh’s confirmation and handling the investigation into allegations of sexual assault. 

“That person, Mr. Stier, didn’t reach out or provide information to the committee majority. … My office never received anything from Mr. Stier or his unnamed friends,” Grassley told the Hill.

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