A watchdog group secretly recorded Russell Vought, a former Trump administration official, explaining his plan to get confidential Project 2025 plans into the Republican nominee’s hands if he wins in November.

A key architect of Project 2025 believed he was speaking to relatives of a wealthy right-wing donor when he described his plan to share a flurry of secret executive orders, proposed regulations, and other documents directly with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his transition team if he wins another White House term in November.

In fact, Russell Vought—who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term—unwittingly divulged his strategy to an undercover journalist and a paid actor working undercover for the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR), an investigative organization based in the United Kingdom.

During the nearly two-hour conversation, which was secretly recorded by CCR’s undercover team, Vought boasted of his close proximity to Trump and voiced confidence that he will be able to get Project 2025’s confidential 180-day plan into the Republican nominee’s hands following the November election, despite the former president’s false claim that he knows “nothing about” the project.

“There are people like me that have his trust that will be able to get it to him in whatever position we’re at,” said Vought, who is expected to receive a high-ranking post in a potential second Trump administration. “The relationships will be there. The trust level will be there.”

Vought, founder of the Center for Renewing America (CRA), went on to describe Project 2025’s secret plan as a “very, very close hold,” which CCR noted is a phrase used by the U.S. government for documents that aren’t for public consumption.

Watch CCR’s video of its conversation with Vought, who expressed his desire to “rehabilitate Christian nationalism,” pursue “the largest deportation in history,” and “block funding for Planned Parenthood”:

NEW

We went undercover in Project 2025.

Our investigation uncovered details of the secretive second phase of Project 2025 being led by a Trump insider, with plans to feed hundreds of highly-confidential battle plans directly into the Trump transition team.

Watch here. pic.twitter.com/je9qHpjAns

— Centre for Climate Reporting (@ClimateReport_) August 15, 2024

Much of the media attention on Project 2025—a sweeping far-right agenda crafted by more than 100 conservative groups and many former Trump administration officials—has centered on the initiative’s 922-page “Mandate for Leadership,” a document that outlines plans to abolish the Education Department, further privatize Medicare, roll back climate regulations and abortion protections, and centralize power in the executive branch.

Such plans are deeply unpopular with the U.S. public, according to recent polling.

But in recent weeks, Democratic lawmakers and watchdogs have attempted to shine light on what Project 2025 has called the “Fourth Pillar” of its agenda, which is briefly described on the project’s website as a “180-day transition playbook” that contains “a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency.”

Micah Meadowcroft, who worked in the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump’s first term, told CCR’s undercover reporter that Vought has “supervised” the handling of Project 2025’s secretive “second phase,” which aims to “break down actual policy packets and executive orders and agenda items and things like that.”

“He’s the team lead behind the scenes, just putting all that together,” said Meadowcroft, who helped set up the meeting between Vought and CCR’s undercover team. “I have colleagues who officially work for CRA, but like 35 out of their 40-hour work week is Project 2025 stuff.”

Meadowcroft went on to describe Project 2025’s secret plan as “a big, fat stack of papers that will be distributed during the transition period, but not as part of the transition.”

“Because obviously, you want as little of it to be FOIA-able… as possible,” he added, referring to the ability of members of the press and the public to request documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Vought told CCR that he is “overseeing a large team that is developing 350 different transition documents, consisting of draft executive orders, secretarial memos, and regulations,” the outlet noted in its detailed story on the investigation.

“His priority, he said, is to provide detailed plans for enacting policies he already knows Trump wants to carry out, based on the former president’s campaign speeches,” CCR continued. “He is confident that these plans won’t end up in a White House shredder, despite the Trump campaign’s insistence that they have nothing to do with Project 2025. He suggested that Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 is a pre-election political ploy rather than anything substantive.”

As Vought himself put it: “He’s running against the brand. He is not running against any people; he is not running against any institutions.”

“He’s very supportive of what we do,” Vought said of Trump’s stance on the Center for Renewing America, which CCR noted is “responsible for promulgating some of the most radical Project 2025 policy ideas.”

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  2025, trump, vought