A man who once described himself as a “raging misogynist” and made inflammatory remarks about consent and slavery now serves as general counsel for President Donald Trump’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM), MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones reported Wednesday.
The revelation comes amid growing concerns over the influence of tech billionaire Elon Musk in the administration. Musk, who helped bankroll much of Trump’s voter outreach operation in the last election, now heads the White House’s newly created “Department of Government Efficiency” task force. Several of his associates have reportedly been embedded within OPM, which functions as the federal government’s human resources office.
Among the most controversial appointees is Andrew Kloster, whose history of incendiary statements has raised alarm. Jones highlighted findings from the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, which documented Kloster’s troubling online activity. “In a [2012] response to a post on The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, as reported by The Daily Beast, Kloster wrote, ‘Consent is probably modern society’s most pernicious fetish,’” the report states.
His history of controversial rhetoric extends beyond that. In 2023, Kloster reportedly tweeted: “Slaves owe us reparations.” In another now-deleted post from last year, he wrote: “I need a woman who looks like she got punched.”
Beyond his inflammatory statements, Kloster has ties to efforts to undermine the 2020 election. He assisted far-right former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in a now-discredited investigation into nonexistent voter fraud—an inquiry so baseless that even Republican lawmakers in the state eventually distanced themselves from it.
Additionally, he appeared to endorse the idea of a civil war if GOP lawmakers were expelled for attempting to overturn the election results. Jones argued that placing someone with Kloster’s record in charge of OPM sends a dangerous message about what will be tolerated in Trump’s second administration.
“Imagine if you discovered that the HR rep in your workplace had engaged in this kind of deplorable behavior,” he wrote. “There would be no reason for you to expect this person to operate with the level of sanity and sensibility needed to run a workplace effectively.”
Kloster’s appointment underscores concerns that Trump’s personnel choices may prioritize ideological loyalty over professional qualifications. With OPM responsible for overseeing the hiring and conduct of millions of federal employees, the presence of an official with such a controversial past is likely to draw continued scrutiny in the weeks ahead.