Nobody seems to know what it is that he does exactly for the $115,000 he gets as special assistant to the president and director of special projects and research, but former Koch guy Michael Roman is definitely doing something. But chances are pretty good that it is unsavory, because his speciality is opposition research—and because his personal obsession is voter fraud.
He reports to White House counsel Don McGahn, who represented the conservative Koch network as a lawyer during the period when Roman was working for the Kochs’ Freedom Partners group as head of research—a $269,000-a-year job that involved tracking the activities of Democratic political organizers and donors.
That’s quite the pay cut from the Kochs, so he must feel like he’s now in a position to do his thing, since he’s not in charge of actually doing any one thing officially, it would seem.
Some said Roman is vetting special appointees by checking their social media footprints and financial backgrounds. A handful of people described Roman as McGahn’s researcher, while one described him as a “loyal soldier” to McGahn. Another characterized his work in the office as opposition research, but could not specify what precisely that entailed. One White House official said he was heavily involved in extensively researching the background of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was selected a year ago.
Right. We’re supposed to believe they actually vetted Gorsuch. Or any of their other nominees. So what’s he really doing there?