Rick Dearborn

Rick Dearborn is a former White House Deputy Chief of Staff to former President Trump. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation with a role dedicated to “support Project 2025.” Specifically, he was brought on to “advise on personnel recommendations and help implement a secure database of conservative staff who are ready to work on day one” and “collaborate with Project 2025’s other partners to develop a policy playbook for the incoming presidential administration.”

Dearborn also wrote the Project 2025 chapter titled “White House Office” in the section “Taking the Reins of Government”. In this chapter Dearborn advocates for a variety of controversial structural and political changes to the White House Office including that the White House Counsel “must take seriously the duty to protect the powers and privileges of the President from encroachments by Congress, the judiciary, and the administrative components of departments and agencies”, that the White House Policy councils must take steps in “combating the Left’s aggressive attacks on life and religious liberty, and confronting ‘wokeism’ throughout the federal government”, and claimed that “No legal entitlement exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House campus”.

Dearborn has been involved in a variety of the worst Trump scandals including the Mueller and Russia investigations. He was reportedly involved in communications about setting up a meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign. Additionally, he played a role in arranging Trump’s 2016 address at the Mayflower Hotel, where Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was present​.

Regarding the Mueller investigation, Dearborn was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee in connection with efforts to obstruct the Special Counsel’s investigation. According to the Mueller Report, he was asked by Corey Lewandowski to deliver a message to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit the scope of the Mueller investigation.

While at the White House, Dearborn was known for making sure good news was making its way to the President. He was also known “as a key link between federal agencies and the West Wing”.

Dearborn is a partner at major lobbying firm, Mindset, where he has lobbied for 23 companies including Amazon Web Services, Citigroup, Meta, and Shell USA. Mindset specializes in the “legislative and regulatory effect on business”. While at Mindset he called for “reversing regulatory policies in order to promote energy production” on Shell’s behalf. This is not new for Dearborn; when he was Executive Director of the Trump Transition Team in 2016, he was a key force in identifying a list of Obama-era regulations that could be eradicated.

Just prior to serving in the Trump Administration, “Dearborn spent nearly two decades working for [Jeff] Sessions in the Senate, eventually rising to chief of staff, a position he held for 12 years, including throughout the 2016 campaign”. When in the White House succeeded in appointing his allies from Capitol Hill to a variety of administration roles.

During the Bush administration he was appointed as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Congressional Affairs where he “worked with the Senate, House, and tribal governments on the President’s energy agenda”.