While Donald Trump and his campaign try to widen the distance between themselves and Project 2025 — a 900-page playbook for a second Trump presidency — at least 140 people who worked in his administration have contributed to it, a CNN review found.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” the former president wrote in a recent TruthSocial post. “I have no idea who is behind it.”
While Trump and his aides are certainly bothered by the attention Project 2025 has received, an investigation into people listed as authors, editors, and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership” shows a long list of the former president's allies involved in the Heritage Foundation plan to overhaul the federal government. These include six of his former cabinet secretaries, four people he nominated as ambassadors, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, longtime adviser Stephan Miller, his impeachment attorney Jay Sekulow, and two other lawyers, Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, who tried to help him overturn the 2020 election.
In total, nearly 240 people were found connected to both Trump and Project 2025. Former Trump-era Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr even wrote an entire chapter; another contributor was anti-abortion advocate Lisa Correnti, who Trump appointed as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
NBC news correspondent Vaughn Hillyard also shared a video of Trump speaking at a Heritage Foundation dinner in April 2022 where he was the keynote speaker.
"This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America," Trump said at the event.
However, the Trump camp remains stubborn in its denial.
“Team Biden and the (Democratic National Committee) are lying and fear-mongering because they have nothing else to offer the American people,” Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez told CNN in a statement.
