NEW: Pres. Trump’s secretive intelligence advisory board, which has access to some of the U.S.’s most closely held secrets and a line to the Oval Office, features security professionals—and some wealthy GOP donors.
Three years ago, Dallas businessman Ray Washburne was vice chairman of the Trump Victory Committee, helping then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republican party raise millions of dollars ahead of the 2016 election – in addition to the more than $100,000 of his own donations to the candidate's and the party's committees.
But former PIAB chairman and ex-Republican senator Chuck Hagel said that considering the sensitive nature of the organization -- and its broad access to secrets -- the practice of pulling from political supporters to fill out the ranks is a particularly concerning tradition. "I was in a [secure facility] every day reading intelligence briefings on countries and leaders and businesspeople throughout the world, because we do business in every far, dark corner of the world," Washburne told ABC News in late May, shortly after the White House announced Trump's intention to nominate him, but before he passed the additional security checks to formally join the board.
Several members of the board did not respond to requests for comment for this report or referred ABC News to the White House National Security Council. The council declined to comment on the board's activities or the criteria for its membership under Trump.
Others had government experience during prior administrations that involved national security, like ex-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss and the board's No. 2, Samantha Ravich, who was deputy national security advisor to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, brought up the prospect in a congressional hearing in February 2017, saying that,"As far as I can tell, this individual does not have national security experience, nor does he appear to have experience in intelligence."
Donovan, who was previously nominated for a top position at the Treasury Department but withdrew, did not respond to requests for comment for this report. A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Going back decades, one of the worst, Desch said, was convened by President Richard Nixon. While not short on experts, the board was aggressively partisan in its work, he said.
But Desch said that following a reportedly dramatic shake-up in Obama's board in 2014, most of the board was dismissed and newcomers included a few people with"far less seemingly relevant experience." For example, one of the new members, Chicago investor Jim Crown, had been a major political donor and worked on Obama's 2008 campaign, according to federal data and contemporaneous news reports. Crown did not respond to a request for comment for this report.
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