When Carl Higbie’s degrading comments about African-Americans, women, gays and Muslims surfaced in January, he resigned from his job in the Trump administration. Yet just two months later, the former Navy SEAL landed at the pro-Trump group America First Policies, earning roughly the same amount as his White House salary, he says.

Higbie, who worked on advocacy issues and tax events for America First, said he never intended to stay at the group forever. But he acknowledges it gave him a soft landing among sympathetic peers at a low point in his career.


“Trumpworld is still very small, and people within Trumpworld generally try to stay within it. Because of my profile, I could never go to a company like Deloitte or McKinsey,” Higbie told POLITICO. “When you are publicly supporting Trump you close a significant number of doors, given how adamantly some people hate the president. Once you’re on Trump’s bandwagon, 80 percent of companies do not want political baggage when they hire you,” he added.

Higbie is just one of the motley crew of die-hard Trump loyalists, ranging from Trump’s ex-bodyguard to visible surrogates such as Katrina Pierson and Corey Lewandowski, who have found their way to a constellation of pro-Trump entities and outside political groups including the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign, America First, or the Great America PAC.

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The practice of shuttling Trump allies over to these groups is getting new attention after former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman revealed that Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, had offered her a $15,000-a-month contract as “hush money” to work for the campaign after she got fired, provided she sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Several Trump allies and administration officials privately said they view these outside jobs — like it or not — as a way to keep potentially problematic people on the payroll or to reward people for their extreme fealty.

“It is blind loyalty and the attitude is, ‘We owe these people since they were there from the beginning. They went through all of this shit and deserve a piece of the pie.’ That is how the world of politics works,” said one administration official. “What they are doing incorrectly is that they have gone overboard with the crazy people.”

Donors are starting to notice. Some have expressed concerns about hard-fought fundraising dollars bankrolling Trump’s crew. The wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump campaign’s $15,000-a-month offer to Manigault Newman has revived long-simmering concerns about how donor money is being spent.

“I have talked to several donors who share my concern about these entities being used as dumping grounds for former allies and staffers to muzzle them,” said Dan Eberhart, an energy company executive and Republican donor. “I don’t think it’s a good practice. Ultimately, donors are giving money to wage a successful campaign not to fund people’s golden parachutes out of the White House.”

The president of America First, Brian O. Walsh, acknowledged that he has heard from frustrated donors. But he insisted he’s been able to satisfy them after talking about America First’s team.

“What’s irritating is the rumors that we have all sorts of people, most of whom I haven’t even met, working for us that actually don’t,” Walsh told POLITICO.

“Hiring some of the people who helped to elect the president in the first place is a plus in our book. To say or imply that any one of these people is ‘not the most capable’ is absurd and reveals ignorance of who we are and what we do.”

In 2017, Lewandowski, Pierson , former White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh,and former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke all worked for America First. But by 2018, Lewandowski had moved on to Vice President Mike Pence’s outside group, the Great America Committee, while Pierson moved over to Trump’s reelection campaign.

“We had two vacancies and filled them with Sean Spicer and our new vice chairwoman, Kimberly Guilfoyle,” Walsh said. In addition to being a prominent former Fox News host, Guilfoyle is also dating Donald Trump Jr.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether donors were concerned about the hiring of ex-White House staffers.

While it appears to be a well-worn path, two administration officials told POLITICO that there is no established policy in place for ensuring that departing White House officials get a lucrative position with an outside pro-Trump group or the 2020 Trump campaign.

Whether an ex-staffer gets an offer at the RNC, the reelection campaign or a group like America First is determined on a case-by-case basis, one of the officials said. One person familiar with the matter said a number of factors can come into play, including whether the president has a close relationship with the staffer and wants to help the person out, and whether there’s a desire to “keep them close and tie their hands a bit.”

When Trump’s former body man, John McEntee, was abruptly fired from the White House in March, the president made it clear to many people in his orbit that McEntee — who is beloved by the whole Trump family including first lady Melania Trump and the president’s children — needed to land well. About 24 hours later, the Trump campaign hired him.

The campaign did not respond to a question about the exact nature of McEntee’s day-to-day job. McEntee, who was reportedly fired because of a high-dollar gambling habit, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump 2020 campaign also now has ties to Justin Caporale, a former White House staffer who worked in the advance office and then for the first lady’s office before abruptly departing the White House in March because of an undisclosed issue with his background check, according to one administration official.

In June 2018, Trump’s campaign quietly paid $2,500 to an LLC called District Programs for “digital consulting,” according to Federal Election Commission data. District Programs was founded by Caporale in 2015. The June payment was the first to District Programs from Trump’s reelection campaign — and it’s unclear whether the payment is recurring because the FEC has not yet released disbursement data for July or August.

Caporale, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the RNC has paid Keith Schiller, Trump’s former bodyguard who left the White House in September, $15,000 a month for security consulting.

Walsh, of America First, stressed that when the organization has vacancies, its first goal is to find qualified people. “We think service on the campaign or in the administration is a plus, not a negative,” Walsh said. “That being said, I regularly speak with people of all backgrounds who want to work for us, but we don’t have a position open or one that fits.”

Asked about America First’s rationale for hiring Higbie, a spokeswoman for the group, Erin Montgomery, said, “Brian met with Carl for an hour, heard him out, but felt he had the experience to do what we needed and was willing to give him the opportunity to help.”

Higbie, who resigned from his prominent post at the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps, stayed on at America First for just three to four months, he said, before returning to his home state of Connecticut where he has always lived full-time with his family. He just got a book contract and, as a former Navy SEAL and prominent Trump surrogate, he is now doing independent consulting work for campaigns and hosting a podcast called “Liberty and Cocktails.”

But Higbie said his job prospects were dramatically limited after CNN first reported about his past comments about women, Muslims and African-Americans and kept running stories about his work within the White House and the pro-Trump group. Higbie found the coverage so unrelenting that he felt like he had to also eventually resign from America First — even though he probably only would have stayed through the midterms, he said.

“The America First thing was never a permanent solution,” he said. “I’ll be completely honest with you: I had a bunch of job offers while I was in the White House, but when CNN published these things about me and the comments I made years ago, people don’t want anything to do with you. I had to go back to the drawing board.”

