Washington (CNN) Career officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs expressed deep frustrations over having to entertain "ridiculous" policy recommendations from a trio of influential Mar-a-Lago club members during President Donald Trump's time in office, according to documents released by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

A series of internal emails spanning from November 2017 to June 2018, show that VA officials wrote to senior staffers with concerns about how this group of three, known within the department as "the Mar-a-Lago crowd," was given the authority to influence policy despite having no government experience or expertise in veterans issues.

CNN has previously reported how this trio, which included Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter, Bruce Moskowitz, a Palm Beach doctor, and lawyer Marc Sherman, was very open about the fact that they had been "anointed by the President and had his full support to influence policy at the VA" despite never being appointed or installed as formal advisers, sources told CNN.

A former VA official previously told CNN that it was almost as if the Mar-a-Lago group were given influence over the agency as "spoils" after Trump's election victory, adding that the dynamic was "unprecedented."

Their influence at the agency caused "frustration and confusion ... for career government employees having to work outside the bounds of what we know is right," one former department official told CNN last year. "We tried on the government side to keep things appropriate, but senior VA officials were applying pressure to meet these outside demands."

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