Trump allies are calling for the federal government to punish Deloitte after an employee at the consulting firm apparently shared his private messages with JD Vance.
The attacks on Deloitte are just the latest example of major American companies getting targeted by former President Donald Trump or those in his orbit.
Deloitte started to feel the wrath of Trump world immediately after The Washington Post published an explosive story on September 27 that revealed Vance said in a private 2020 message that Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver” his economic agenda. The Post did not reveal who corresponded with Vance, now Trump’s running mate, and leaked those communications.
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son and a surrogate for the campaign, swiftly responded on social media that same day by revealing what he said was the identity and picture of that Deloitte employee and suggesting his employer pay the price.
“Maybe it’s time for the GOP to end Deloitte’s taxpayer funded gravy train?” Trump Jr. wrote on X, noting that Deloitte receives billions of dollars in government contracts. His post was retweeted by a Vance spokesperson and amplified by Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller.
Trump Jr. told CNN he was speaking his mind as a private citizen.
Deloitte received about $3 billion from the US federal government in fiscal 2024, according to federal data. That includes nine-figure amounts from major agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security.
Two days later, Trump Jr. followed up in another tweet that asked if Deloitte had commented yet on an employee “conspiring” with the Post to “help Kamala Harris.”
“We’re not forgetting this,” Trump Jr. said in a post that was shared by GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt, who demanded Deloitte respond to the “outrageous” scandal.
Neither Trump nor Vance have publicly threatened Deloitte, and it’s worth noting that Trump Jr. has indicated he does not plan to serve in the federal government. Representatives for Vance and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Still, the attacks on Deloitte fit a broader pattern of US businesses getting singled out by Trump and his allies and underscore the risk that the former president could weaponize the federal government if he’s returned to the White House in January.
“It’s outrageous. It shows how inappropriate Trump is as a candidate and how irresponsible he and his family would be if he’s back in office,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told CNN in a phone interview.
More so than any modern US president, Trump has directly targeted individual US businesses.
In just the past two weeks, Trump himself has vowed to hit John Deere with unthinkably-high tariffs and threatened to send the Justice Department after Google.
In the past, Trump has called for boycotts against Apple and Harley-Davidson, accused Amazon of scamming the US Postal Service, threatened General Motors over where it planned to build its cars and labeled Facebook an “enemy of the people.”
“Donald Trump attacks iconic companies – the very symbols of American capitalism,” said Sonnenfeld. “This is unparalleled vindictiveness and intrusion into private sector decision-making and undermining the rule of law.”
Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, described the attacks on Deloitte as “shameful.”
Painter, who is a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said Trump’s son was functioning as a proxy for Trump’s own retaliation against the company.
Painter said that acting against Deloitte’s federal contracts would be an “abuse of federal contracting law.”
“Federal procurement is based on quality and price, and hence value to the taxpayers, not who does or does not support the president politically,” Painter said. “Even if Deloitte itself had supported Trump’s political opponent, that should not cost them a government contract.”
In a statement to CNN, Trump Jr. said that the Deloitte employee “had a right to leak the communications, Washington Post had a right to print them and as a private citizen I have a right to speak my mind about where my tax dollars go.”
Trump Jr. went on to criticize the Deloitte employee as a “scumbag” for leaking the private conversation and the Post journalist as a “scumbag” for not warning his source that “when you engage in the political process in this fashion there is almost always public blowback.”
(The Post said the paper did inform the Deloitte employee his name could become public.)
In an article published this weekend that described him as the “crown prince of MAGA world,” Trump Jr. told The Wall Street Journal he has no interest in ever working in government and doesn’t plan to run for office.
Asked about the attacks from some in Trump’s orbit, Deloitte spokesperson Jonathan Gandal told CNN in a statement that the personal messages were shared by an individual “on his own volition without the knowledge of Deloitte, which is a non-partisan firm.”
“Deloitte is deeply committed to supporting our government and commercial clients and we have a long track record of doing so across parties and administrations,” the Deloitte spokesperson said.
Deloitte did not respond to questions about whether the firm has disciplined the employee or plans to.
Unlike other companies that have been threatened by Trump over shipping jobs overseas or shutting factories, the actions in question in the Deloitte case were centered around one individual at the firm. Deloitte was not even mentioned in the private messages that were leaked, according to the Post.
“Deloitte has about 150,000 professionals inside the US, and one person doesn’t represent the entire enterprise,” said Yale’s Sonnenfeld. “They are entitled to their own voice.”
Norman Eisen, a CNN analyst and senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution, said it’s “hard to understand how a company legally can or morally should be the subject of threatened retaliation for an employee’s personal activities.”
“But Trump and his allies have telegraphed their intent to weaponize the DOJ and the government to go after their perceived enemies,” Eisen said, “and we must take very seriously the prospect that businesses will face retaliation.”
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