Kari Lake wants to shutter agency Trump tapped her to lead — but 'is she really the CEO?'

13 August

'Why torture yourself?': Kari Lake rules out running for office again — and Trump seems to agree

Former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is trying to shut down government-funded media outlets she was tapped to lead, but NPR reports challengers want her to define her job title before she does it.

"The government does not operate on the whims of a ‘Kari Lake’ or even of a ‘Donald Trump’," said Democracy Defenders Fund attorney Norman Eisen, who is representing press advocacy groups in lawsuits against Lake over her effort to shutter Voice of America. "If you have a role in government, it has to be defined and documented," Eisen told NPR. "Who knows if that's a self-anointed title? One way or the other, this raises the most profound legal questions."

NPR reports the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) has recently called Lake its acting CEO, but Lake may not be legally eligible for the job. That question could hold weight considering a federal judge voided directives affecting asylum rules in 2020 after finding Trump's appointment of the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was unlawful.

NPR said it has “repeatedly asked the White House press office, Lake and another senior agency official” for documentation of Lake’s current role in the Trump administration, but has received no replies.

"It's important to find out — is she really the CEO? How did she arrive there?" asked Grant Turner, who served as chief executive of USAGM during Trump's first term. "If she doesn't have that authority — and she's claiming to have the authority — then it's really just invalid. There's so many things that may come back to haunt Kari Lake and USAGM."

"Maybe she just wants to have a cool title to wave around," Turner says, "but if she really doesn't have true legal authority to have that title, then they're really just begging for problems."

Lake was a two-time unsuccessful MAGA candidate for senator and governor in Arizona before Trump announced his plan to appoint her director of Voice of America. The problem with that, said NPR, is federal law does not allow a president to unilaterally appoint a director over the agency. So Trump essentially dissolved the government advisory board set up by Congress to oversee Voice of America’s international networks and named Lake a “senior adviser” to run it.

The Atlantic reports Lake is now working to deport non-citizen Voice of America employees who hold J-1 visas.

Read the full NPR report at this link.

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