Watch CNN's report that at least 140 former Trump employees contributed directly to Project 2025
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From the July 11, 2024, edition of CNN's CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta
STEVE CONTORNO (REPORTER): Jim, when Donald Trump said that he didn't know who was behind Project 2025 we decided to take a look at who exactly was involved and we read through the list of authors, contributors, looked at staff pages of all these advisory groups that have been working on the project. And we found more than 200 people have some sort of tie to Donald Trump, his campaign, his past transition teams, people he has endorsed, people he has nominated including 140 people who contributed directly to that playbook you discussed who have previous experience working in the Donald Trump White House and his administration. It includes people who reached the highest levels of his government, including six people who rose to cabinet positions, such as: Ben Carson, his former HUD secretary and the OPM Director, Russ Vought. He also has several people that he nominated for ambassadorship, many of the key architects behind his early immigration crackdown, one of his deputy chiefs of staff. All of these people had some sort of involvement with writing Project 2025's playbook. Now we took this information to the Trump campaign and they said, "Look, these people may have worked for Donald Trump, they don't work for him now, they may never work for him again. What they say does not reflect the views of Donald Trump. He has posted his own agenda on his campaign website. He supports the Republican party platform but he has no ties at all to this, this organization." And we should note that the former president overnight posted on Truth Social once again distancing himself from Project 2025. But Jim, this is going on as Democrats are intensifying their efforts to connect him to many of his more controversial policies.