Andrew Kloster has a new job in the Trump administration, as reported by the Project On Government Oversight. Kloster has landed as the new general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management. The New York University Law graduate has made the rounds in conservative legal circles, previously working at OPM in the first Trump term, becoming a prominent 2020 election denier, and serving as general counsel for congressman Matt Gaetz (FL-01).
He also has a well-documented history of saying wildly inappropriate things online.
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It wasn’t even a long time ago, so it’s hard to even disingenuously chalk it up to youthful indiscretion. In 2023(!) he was tweeting that he identified as a “raging misogynist,” saying, “I’m 100% women respecter precisely because I’m a raging misogynist. I’m so kind you’ll want to kill yourself and die, which is the goal.”
Around that time he also tweeted, “I need a woman who looks like she got punched.” Which was only a few months after being served a temporary restraining order. He referred to “literally all women” as annoying liberals.
In 2012, he also commented on a Volokh Conspiracy article that, “Consent is probably modern society’s most pernicious fetish.”
But it isn’t only women that the new counsel for the federal government’s HR department has attacked online. He also wrote, “Slaves owe us reparations,” and “slavery was voluntary.” He called Chinese people uncivilized and compared them to raccoons.
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Oh, and he also seemed to encourage a civil war. Delightful.
Now he’s in a position to significantly alter the protections for federal workers, as reported by POGO:
As chief counsel for OPM, Kloster could influence policies that allow more politicization of the federal workforce, could undermine protections for career staff and allow political beliefs to become a factor in who to hire, fire, and promote. OPM crafts the rules that implement the Hatch Act, a law regulating federal employees’ involvement in partisan political activities.
The Office of Personnel Management is also playing a critical role in implementing the president’s “Schedule Policy/Career” executive order issued last week, overseeing every agency’s plans to strip statutory protections from some employees. Yesterday, the office issued a memo to all agencies directing them to designate a point of contact for their Schedule Policy/Career conversion efforts by this Wednesday (Schedule Policy/Career was formerly known as “Schedule F”).
That’s just fantastic.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].