A former Trump administration official who allegedly was inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is working on Donald Trump’s transition team, Politico’s Daniel Lippman reported Monday, citing three people with knowledge of the situation.
Pete Marocco is handling personnel matters relating to national security, according to the outlet, which says two individuals have seen him in Florida at the transition team’s headquarters.
In November, Marocco and his wife, Merritt, were alleged by Sedition Hunters, a group of citizen investigators, to have been inside the Capitol while Trump supporters sought to prevent the peaceful transition of power. Neither Marocco nor his wife have been charged, and the former Trump official reacted to the allegation in a statement to D Magazine, which read in part: “Petty smear tactics and desperate personal attacks by politicians with no solutions.”
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Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt similarly told Politico in a statement that Marocco’s “valuable knowledge on national security policy has been a tremendous benefit to the Trump-Vance transition effort.”
Leavitt, Trump’s pick for White House press secretary, added: “Democrats and their allies in the media who think they are going to obstruct our ability to deliver on this mandate by going back to the same January 6 playbook of smears and faux outrage that was soundly rejected by the American people will be disappointed.”
In Trump’s first administration, Marocco, a former Marine, had roles in the State Department, the Commerce Department, and, most recently, the Defense Department, where he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs.
