Washington – Jamieson Greer has a great job – three of them, in fact.
As a representative of American trade, Greer has stolen worldwide at the request of Donald Trump, a merchant with the countries on the prices that the president has imposed.
In addition to that, he is the government’s official watchdog. The White House appointed Greer both interim director of the government’s ethics office and head of the special council office.
Cutting trade agreements to Trump’s taste is one thing. Holding the Trump administration responsible for ethical failures is something different. The missions would seem incompatible. However, Greer’s hybrid role is not so much an anomaly in Trump’s second term as a standard.
Trump has taken some members of the firm and senior administration officials and has superimposed additional work that calls for entirely different skills sets.
Daniel Driscll is secretary of the army, but also acting director of the alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives. The first job is to keep the soldiers in the fight against garnishes; The second includes the reduction of smuggling cigarettes.
Marco Rubio is Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and, to make a good measure, actor chief of the National Archives and Records Administration, with his collection of rare documents which include the patent application of Thomas Edison for the bulb. He is also the acting administrator of the American agency for international development – or what remains, in any case, after the Trump administration has effectively dismantled it.
Trump recently appointed Vice-Printeur General Todd Blanche, the actor of the Congress Library. The Ministry of Justice confirms the laws and advances Trump’s agenda; The library is supposed to give legislators the independent research they ask for.
Double publications give birth to a tangle of managerial challenges, constitutional questions and conflicts of potential interests, according to criticism. If a denunciator manifests himself and alleys with reprehensible acts at the Greer commercial office, can he give the complaint a fair audience? Is Rubio equipped to forge a peace agreement in Ukraine while ensuring that visitors have enriching experience at the Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa, and the other 15 presidential libraries that the archives execute?
“This is the model of a confused start -up operation,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, professor at the School of Management at the University of Yale.
The Democrats of the Congress took note of appointments and opposed what they describe as a term in the law of the Senate to confirm or reject presidential appointments.
Greer was confirmed by the Senate as a commercial representative, but not as head of the special consulting or ethics offices. Rubio was confirmed as Secretary of State, but not as the archivist.
Blanche was confirmed for his post as Ministry of Justice, but not as an acting librarian. Beyond that, the own rules of the library indicate that the acting librarian must come from the institution – a provision which seems to exclude white. (Indeed, the library disputes that Blanche is now in charge; a library official, Robert Newlen, sent an e-mail to employees last week by identifying themselves as the interim librarian.)
“This is the library of Congress; Not the Library of the Attorney General or the President’s Library, ”said senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.,
“This is a truly offensive challenge of the constitutional role that the Senate must play,” added Blumenthal. “Putting someone in this role that has been approved for different work is an inch in the eye of the Senate.”
Then there is the question of the workload. Any of these jobs can fill 24 hours a day. Stacking one at the top of another would seem to stretch the limits of human endurance. In an interview last week with CNBC, Greer was asked how much sleep he has one night.
Four or five hours, he said.
He had just returned from Switzerland where he participated in commercial negotiations with China. Once he finished with his television interviews for the day, he said he was going to take the phone and talk about trade with the Indian Minister of Commerce. Later in the week, he flew to South Korea for a summit meeting with his commercial counterparts abroad.
When he was asked if Greer still presented himself to the special advice office in Washington, DC, a spokesperson for the office said: “No comments.”
A sign of the enormity of the Greer portfolio is that he has unloaded part of a subordinate. He typed another special council manager, Charles Baldis, to act like his representative. Greer consults Baldis, who runs the office on his behalf, said a special advisory assistant at NBC News.
A spokesperson for the US trade representative did not answer questions or Greer available to comment.
“These jobs are difficult to do for people,” said Max Stier, founding president of the Public Service Partnership, a non -profit group devoted to improving government performance. “They require an absolute and crushing commitment to make only one, and there is no way on the green earth of God that someone can make multiples effectively. This has profound problems for decision-making and the ability of these organizations to do their own work and for the morale of the workforce. ”
A White House spokesman defended the management’s management practices.
“The president understands that he has built an extremely qualified team of people who can be double time and do the work,” said Harrison Fields, assistant press secretary of the White House.
He added that “the president has incredible quantities of confidence and confidence in those who occupy several roles, and he appreciates their commitment to his administration and the country.”
“Show me a situation where a bullet was released,” said Fields. “Show me a situation where the president’s agenda failed. No one can do it. The president has a team of people who are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. ”
The administration of President Joe Biden, on the other hand, was made up of “so-called experts who led our country in the ground,” continued the fields.
An emerging scheme is that Trump wants his most reliable officials in roles that are important for his interests. Consider Rubio.
Earlier this month, Trump took the unusual measure to praise Rubio as a potential successor.
“He trusted Marco,” said Trump advisor to NBC News.
The work of the archives handed over to Rubio would seem a government locker, but he played an important role in the events leading to the accusation of Trump in 2023 for his retention of classified documents in his home in Mar-A-Lago after his departure.
The archives informed Trump’s lawyers four months after leaving his duties in 2021 that some of his presidential files were missing, including his correspondence with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
The following year, the Inspector General of the Archives sent a reference letter to the Ministry of Justice noting that Trump had kept “highly classified files” after leaving his functions. Trump repeatedly denied any reprehensible act and the American district judge Aileen Cannon rejected the case last year.
“When he [Trump] Returning to the White House in January 2025, he lost shortly to purge the main leaders of Nara to make room for faithful officials more likely to make his auctions – or even to close his eyes to future legal violations, including the law on presidential files, “said American Oversight, a non -profit surveillance group, in a statement.
Another advantage for Trump, keeping a small circle of the same decision -makers is that he suppresses the challenges of his authority, the former civil servants and the good government groups claim.
“If you give 20 jobs to one person, he will not have time to think independently,” said John Bolton, a former national security advisor who was used for Trump’s first mandate. “They will just do what he [Trump] tells them to do it.
It is alert that some legislators may be, there does not seem to be much to do to prevent Trump from concentrating key jobs in the hands of a few people.
Last month, representative Ayanna Pressley, D-MASS., And three other Democratic members of the Congress sent a letter to Greer asking him to resign from his ethical jobs, arguing that he cannot make them impartially.
“Dear ambassador, acting special advisor and acting director Greer,” started the letter.
Greer sent an answer, but that did not include an agreement to resign or many details, said a Democratic Assistant in Congress at NBC News.
“We are thinking of the next steps,” added the help.
