President Donald Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser, John Bolton, reportedly plans to “clean house” at the National Security Council.
Sources told Foreign Policy that Bolton’s planned purge will start with Obama administration holdovers and eventually broaden to include leakers and those disloyal to the president.
“Bolton can and will clean house,” a former White House official told Foreign Policy.
Another official issued a warning to former Obama officials — “Everyone who was there during Obama years should start packing their shit.”
But the purge reportedly won’t stop with former Obama appointees. A source told Foreign Policy that Bolton intends to “remove almost all the political [appointees] McMaster brought in.”
One Bolton source put a damper on the report, saying it was “premature” to talk about staff changes. Another cautioned that any staff changes, were they to be signed off on by Bolton, would be slow in coming because of the time it takes to process security clearances, which will likely leave Bolton with most current staff for President Trump’s upcoming May meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
However, Matthew Freedman, a Republican consultant and Bolton adviser who is helping to manage the transition, is reportedly “overly ambitious about cleaning house,” according to a Republican source, although Freedman himself told Foreign Policy there was currently “no list” of people to fire.