Top Kelly aide devised plan to quietly exit White House and stay on payroll: report

Zachary Fuentes, a 36-year-old deputy of outgoing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, devised a plan to remain on the White House payroll for six months after Kelly’s departure to cash in on an early retirement program through the Coast Guard, in which he is an active duty officer. 

Several White House staffers told The New York Times that Fuentes discussed the retirement program with officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which then began pressing Congress in November to reinstate it after it ended at the end of fiscal year 2018. 

{mosads}A provision to reinstate it was pulled Wednesday from a House bill after questions from reporters.

The White House told The New York Times that Fuentes planned to remain on for a time as a senior adviser to aid in the transition to a new chief of staff.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

Fuentes, a polarizing figure inside the administration, was reportedly seeking a way out of the White House before Kelly’s resignation was announced this month.

The Coast Guard implemented its early retirement program five years ago to match those of other military branches. It allowed the agency to grant early retirement with partial benefits to limited numbers of officers and enlisted service members with fewer than the standard 20 years of service. Fuentes will have served 19 years this coming July.

However, the Coast Guard has used the program on only a few instances and did not include an extension of the program among a list of requests when Congress wrote legislation reauthorizing the agency, according to The Times. 

The Coast Guard requested the change in November after the legislation was already locked. President Trump signed the bill in December without the extension. The extension was looped into a list of technical corrections to the bill this month. 

The Coast Guard said the extension would be used for 10 people at most and denied it had been requested to aid one person. 

The bill was introduced this week, but the extension was pulled after being confronted with questions to ensure the rest of the corrections could be implemented.

Fuentes has come under the spotlight over his role in canceling Trump’s appearance at an American military cemetery near Paris in November due to rain, a move that was widely panned.