Leaked videos reveal Project 2025 architect's plan for a far-right “shadow” government

A former senior Trump administration official who played a key role in crafting the far-right Project 2025 agenda said in closed-door speeches Monday that he wanted to traumatize career civil servants and lay the groundwork for Republican candidate Donald Trump to seize power with unfettered control over the federal government if he wins the election on November 5th.

In collaboration with the monitoring organization Documented, ProPublica released several videos on Monday of two private speeches given by Russell Vought – who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's first term – in 2023 and 2024.

During the previously unreported speeches ProPublica And it was documented that Vought laid out “detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest” and “defunded the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“Taken together, the two speeches delivered by Vought offer an unvarnished look at the animating ideology and political worldview of a key figure in the MAGA movement,” the new reporting states. “Following Trump’s rhetoric, Vought implicitly supported the false claim of a stolen election in 2020 and compared the media’s debunking of that claim to Chinese communist propaganda.”

Vought also laid out in disturbing terms his intention to “traumatically affect” federal employees as part of a broader effort to purge the government of scientists and other officials seen as disloyal to Trump.

“When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly seen as villains,” Vought said in a clip released by ProPublica and documented. “We want their funding stopped so the EPA can't implement all the rules against our energy industry because they don't have the financial ability to do so.”

While Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 by claiming he knew nothing about it and had “no idea who was behind it,” at least 140 members of his first administration — including Vought — were involved in putting together the sprawling far-right agenda , which lays out plans to loosen climate regulations, further restrict access to abortion, cut summer food assistance programs for children and cut taxes on the rich.

Vought, who runs the Center for Renewing America think tank, has rejected Trump's attempt to reject Project 2025, telling an undercover journalist earlier this year that the Republican nominee was “very supportive of what we're doing.”

In the speech of 2024 ProPublica and documented, Vought said that he and other Project 2025 leaders have put together “detailed agency plans” and are “writing the actual executive orders” for Trump to sign if he defeats Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.

“We are now writing the actual regulations,” Vought said, “and we are clarifying the legal basis for everything that President Trump is pursuing.”

Special, ProPublica and Documented reported that Vought “explained how his think tank is crafting the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad authority to use the military for domestic law enforcement.”

Vought expressed regret that Trump was stopped from invoking the Insurrection Act to quell mass demonstrations for racial justice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, saying during the 2023 speech ProPublica and documented that his preparations for a possible second Trump administration included establishing a “shadow office” of legal counsel, the body that advises presidents on their powers.

Vought, loudly ProPublica and Documented, “made clear that he wants the office to help Trump crush the kind of internal resistance he faced in his first term.”

Jesse Eisinger, senior editor at ProPublicadescribed Vought's assessment of the current state of the US as “apocalyptic stuff” and pointed to his stated view that the country is “in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover… in which our opponents already have the government's weapons apparatus, and.” they pointed it at us.

Vought — who previously said he hoped to “rehabilitate Christian nationalism” — portrayed Trump as a sort of savior in one of the newly unveiled speeches, calling him “a man so uniquely positioned to fulfill that role.”

“He saw what it did to him and he saw what they wanted to do to the country,” Vought added. “This is nothing more than a gift from God.”