Back in January, I warned that ‘Kochers’ were taking over the Pentagon.
“As of today, the incoming Trump Administration has hired over 1,000 people,” President Trump tweeted. “It would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch)” along with a long list of others.
But by then it was already too late. The Kochers were already on the inside.
Dan Caldwell, listed as a lobbyist by Americans for Prosperity who worked for a number of Koch network groups, has been staffing up the Department of Defense with ‘Kochlings’. The ‘Kochlings’ are members of the vast Koch network that includes Stand Together, currently the parent group of Americans for Prosperity, where Caldwell served as the Vice President of Foreign Policy.
“Conservatives should not act as though a war with China is preordained, lest they wind up unintentionally sparking one,” Caldwell argued in Foreign Affairs magazine. “Conservative policymakers should therefore avoid responding to the challenges posed by China with policies that would increase the likelihood of direct conflict.” Caldwell warned against provoking China by providing a security guarantee to Taiwan or “extending military aid to wealthy countries in East Asia”.
Now Caldwell has become one of two senior Pentagon Koch figures suspended in an investigation over leaks.
Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was escorted out of the Pentagon by security officers and had his building access suspended pending further investigation, said two of the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe.
Darin Selnick, the Pentagon’s deputy chief of staff, was also suspended as part of the same probe and escorted out of the building, according to one of the officials.
Both Caldwell and Selnick are former Koch assets.
The suspensions come as the Trump administration seeks to root out leaks, including at the Defense Department. A March memo signed by Hegseth’s chief of staff asked the Pentagon’s director for defense intelligence to look into unauthorized disclosures, and approved the use of polygraphs.
I’m going to venture a guess that whatever is involved here is more serious than the usual Signal chats with reporters pushing inside baseball or smears of other D.C. figures.
They generally don’t escort you out of the building for that. Not when there’s some serious insiders behind you including at least one senator and a rather powerful billionaire.
We don’t know the full details yet, but it’s instructive to note Dan Caldwell had praised Biden’s choice of Rob Malley, a top Soros figure, as envoy to Iran.
Malley would later come under investigation for mishandling classified information.
Back then I noted that Malley headed Soros’ International Crisis Group. Charles Koch was a donor to ICG. Koch and Soros co-founded the Quincy Institute. Caldwell worked for Koch.
Whatever’s going on here, Koch-Soros assets don’t belong in the Trump administration.
President Trump made it clear that he didn’t want Koch people in his administration. The Pentagon is now crawling with them. Hopefully this is the beginning of POTUS reclaiming the Pentagon from Charles Koch.
