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WASHINGTON (AP) – The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears in the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staff members to give up sensitive information about the fraud election campaign and other issues she might take to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.
Heidi Stirrup, an ally of Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed in the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. In the past two weeks, she was told to leave the building after senior justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information on ongoing cases and the ministry’s work on electoral fraud, reported people said.
Stirrup is accused of approaching department staff to ask him to give him information about the investigations, including cases of electoral fraud, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The effort came as Trump continues to baselessly claim that he won the election and without evidence that massive voter fraud was responsible for his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
Stirrup had also extended job vacancies to political allies for positions at some of the highest levels of the Justice Department without consulting senior department officials or the White House Council office and also attempted to interfere in the process of recruiting career staff, a violation of government human resources policies, one of the people said.
The Justice Department declined to comment. Attempts to reach Stirrup for comment were not immediately successful.
Trump appointed Stirrup to the U.S. Air Force Academy Visitors Council on Thursday, according to a White House press release.
Earlier this week, Attorney General William Barr told the AP that U.S. attorneys and the FBI had looked into the allegations. electoral irregularities and found no evidence of widespread electoral fraud that could alter the outcome of the election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have had a different outcome in the election,” he said Tuesday.
Trump hit back at Barr on Thursday, saying the Justice Department “didn’t look very harsh” and calling it a disappointment. But he did not suggest that Barr’s future as attorney general might be cut short.
“Ask me that in a few weeks from now,” Trump said when asked if he still trusted Barr.
“They should look at all of this fraud,” Trump said.
He also criticized Barr’s statement that much of what has been presented so far by the Trump campaign and its allies amount to allegations of prosecution, not federal crimes.
“It’s not civilian. It’s crime. It’s very bad, criminal stuff, ”Trump said.
Stirrup, who was previously a central figure in the Trump administration’s campaign for sweeping immigration policies, remains technically in her post after being placed in the Justice Department by the White House’s Office of Presidential Personnel.
The Trump administration has worked to have the liaisons report directly to the White House rather than the agencies where they work. Across the administration, there were concerns that the liaisons were jeopardizing the work of not only career professionals but also Trump’s own appointees.
Shortly after the election, the Presidential Personnel Office also ordered liaison officers to fire all political candidates seeking employment, while Trump refused to accept the election results. Trump’s term ends at noon on January 20. Several thousand people appointed across the government will have their jobs terminated on that date.
The White House personnel office was headed by former Trump personal assistant John McEntee, who renewed Trump’s efforts to rid the administration of those deemed “disloyal” to the president.
In September, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson inadvertently made public his anger at McEntee when cameras captured a writing on the back of a page he was viewing during a speech.
In a reference to the White House’s Office of Presidential Personnel, Carson’s notes said, “I’m not happy with the way PPO is running my agency.” It is a sentiment that has been shared across government.
Stirrup, a close ally of Miller, was previously the Acting Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and was also Deputy White House Liaison Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services.
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