WASHINGTON: While publicly denying he lost the election, outgoing President Donald Trump on Tuesday appointed several key aides to the boards of public institutions, a sign he is planning for his departure from the White House despite his refusal to concede.
Trump, who is due to hand over to Democratic president-elect Joe Biden on Jan 20, appointed Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany and one of his staunchest defenders, to the Board of Trustees of the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC.
His close advisor Hope Hicks, who had worked for the Trump Organisation before joining the presidential campaign in 2015 when she was just 26, will join the board of directors of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship, a prestigious scholarship programme for foreign students in the US and US students overseas.
Former White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham will join the National Council for Educational Sciences, an advisory body.
According to a press release announcing more than 40 nominations – in addition to similar ones unveiled in recent weeks – Trump has also placed Pam Bondi on the board of directors of the prestigious John F Kennedy arts centre in Washington.
The former Florida attorney general had been part of the legal team tasked with defending the president during his impeachment trial in the Senate, and more recently joined the lawyers who sought to overturn Biden’s election.
Despite the failure of almost all his legal efforts, the certification of the results in each state and their validation by the Electoral College, the outgoing Republican president continues to claim, without any proof, that he won the November ballot.
Speculation is rife as to what his next steps will be to try to invalidate the election results, although most observers agree they will be doomed to failure.
It remains unclear if he will attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony on Jan 20, but he has indicated he will leave the White House when his term ends.