Campaign Against Corporate Complicity Holds Corporate America Accountable To Its Promises

Washington, D.C. — Today, the Campaign Against Corporate Complicity, a joint project of nonpartisan watchdog groups Accountable.US and American Oversight, launched a new web portal to help hold corporate America accountable to its promises and to prevent normalizing the cruel and undemocratic actions of the Trump administration. The new site highlights key abuses of the Trump administration — abuses that many corporations and business leaders publicly spoke out against — and encourages potential private sector employers to fully vet former officials looking to sell their government experience as a qualification rather than a disgrace.

“These former Trump officials were architects of cruel policies that targeted some of the country’s most vulnerable, while threatening our very democracy. They shouldn’t be rewarded for their egregious behavior with cushy jobs or lucrative book deals,” said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US. “An organization’s staff is an extension of its values, and any company looking to quietly hire former Trump officials will too be associated in the public eye with the administration’s cruel and harmful actions.” 

“We can’t allow the gross abuses of the last administration to be laundered through the usual, Washington revolving door,” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight. “If you’re an employer who spoke out against family separation or white supremacy, you need to carefully vet any former Trump officials to be sure that their actions in government were consistent with your corporate values.”  

The campaign encourages leaders of major companies, media organizations, publishing houses, and public speaking firms to avoid normalizing the harmful policies that senior-level Trump administration officials helped implement.

The new website identifies four areas in which the Trump administration crossed the line — including family separation and vilifying immigrants, promoting white supremacy, undermining our democracy, and misinforming the public about COVID-19 — and it details the roles that senior Trump officials played in implementing those policies, including:  

• For separating families & vilifying immigrants:
  • Stephen Miller: With a long history of promoting and defending white supremacy, Miller was a chief architect of the Trump administration’s deliberately cruel family separation policy, which ripped thousands of immigrant children away from their families. Miller also drove the anti-immigrant agenda across the administration, promoting the “Muslim ban” and the reduction in refugee admissions, and seeking to falsely link immigration to crime.
  • Chad Wolf: As a top official at the Department of Homeland Security, Wolf was one of the early architects of the family separation policy. Wolf later oversaw elements of the administration’s harsh crackdown on racial justice protesters in Portland, Oregon, and other cities.
• For undermining our democracy:
  • William Barr: Attorney General Barr spearheaded the Trump administration’s attempt to transform the Justice Department into a political arm of the White House, targeting the president’s perceived enemies and protecting his friends. Barr personally misrepresented the findings of the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and under his leadership, DOJ dropped prosecutions of Trump allies Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. He also participated in the aggressive crackdown on racial justice protesters as public reporting has indicated that Barr issued the instructions that led to the violent clearing of peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square in June 2020.
  • Mark Meadows: Following the 2020 presidential election, Meadows used his position as White House chief of staff to attempt to pressure both federal and state officials to overturn the election results and keep President Trump in office. Meadows also undermined the federal pandemic response, spreading misinformation and pressuring Trump to oppose a national mask mandate for political reasons. 
• For misinforming the public about COVID-19:
  • Larry Kudlow: A senior White House official during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kudlow used his public position to repeatedly downplay the severity of the outbreak and promote false talking points claiming that the administration’s response had been successful. 
  • Kayleigh McEnany: As White House press secretary, McEnany supported President Trump’s attempts to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

More details on the campaign can be found here. 

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