by Kristina Wong, Breitbart:

It was mid-May, about six weeks after Trump appointee Mari Stull began her new job as senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

As senior adviser at the bureau, Stull was in charge of making sure President Trump’s agenda was represented at the many international organizations the U.S. participates in and mostly funds, such as the United Nations and its various agencies.

Stull and her boss, Amb. Kevin Moley, had just left for a trip to Geneva for the World Health Assembly. Back at the State Department, Erin Barclay, a senior career diplomat at the IO Bureau, invited more than ten civil servants within the bureau to a lunch meeting.

At the meeting, Molly Phee, another senior career diplomat, went around the table and asked each civil servant for complaints about Stull and took notes. Another senior career diplomat in the IO bureau, Nerissa Cook, was also there. One civil servant who participated in the meeting would later say the meeting felt uncomfortable, and that there was pressure to say something.

Several weeks later, the first hit piece against Stull ran in an exclusive Foreign Policy report. The June 13 piece alleged that Stull was “vetting” U.S. employees at the State Department and at the United Nations to determine whether they were “loyal” to President Trump.

The piece also alleged Stull had a “highly secretive management style,” had emerged as the most “dominant force” in the bureau, had required that she review new directives from the office before they went out, and that she was stripping references to “international law” and “international order” from action items and memos.

Not one source was named in the piece, which cited the allegations from “nearly a dozen” anonymous “current and former U.S. officials.” The piece did, however, mention three deputy assistant secretaries of state in the bureau: Phee, Barclay, and Cook, who were said to be leaving to other positions at State.

After the article published, three top Democrats — Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ), Rep. Eliot Engel (NY), and Elijah Cummings (MD) — then sent a letter dated June 19 to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo citing the article and demanding documents related to Stull and her alleged vetting of employees’ loyalty.

Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan then launched an investigation into whether Stull had been vetting employees for loyalty, according to a source.

Some officials now believe the meeting was to collect ammunition to be leaked to Foreign Policy. At least several civil servants who participated in the meeting are now planning to file a complaint against Phee for putting them on the spot and making them gripe about Stull, according to the source.

The episode reveals what some officials and outside observers believe is a concerted leak campaign to force out a Trump appointee at a bureau that has seen results in the implementation of Trump’s policies.

Leaks like these from what has become known as “the Deep State” have plagued the Trump administration since it took office.

Most operators in the Deep State — a loosely connected group of holdovers from the Obama administration, Republican appointees who disagree with Trump’s agenda, as well as several of the 2.8 million career government employees working throughout the federal bureaucracy — have operated with near impunity, facing no consequences for their actions.

They remain anonymous, like the author of a recent op-ed in the New York Times, and have been aggressive — wiping out many of the president’s appointees. Breitbart News, through this exclusive report, is exposing just a sliver of how these leakers maneuver — naming names and detailing the process through which they engage in their anti-Trump attacks.

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