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Sam Clovis has withdrawn from consideration for the position because of connections to the alleged Trump-Russia collusion, but he'll still have a senior position at the Department of Agriculture.
The probe of collusion between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia has sunk one of Trump's anti-LGBT nominees, with Sam Clovis withdrawing from consideration to be the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist.
"The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position," Clovis, a marriage equality opponent and climate change denier, wrote to Trump Wednesday, according to The Washington Post. "The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases with intensity each day." Clovis's Senate confirmation hearing had been scheduled for November 9. He will, however, take another senior position at the department. He is currently its senior White House adviser.
It emerged this week that Clovis, as a national cochair of the Trump campaign, had urged George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Trump, to meet with Russian officials. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign sources of information. "I would encourage you" to make the trip for the meeting, Clovis wrote to Papadopoulos in August 2016, the Post reports. Clovis's attorney told the paper, though, that he actually opposed the meeting and that his note to Papadopoulos simply reflected courtesy from "a polite gentleman from Iowa."
Clovis was a talk show host, business professor, and political activist in Iowa. He unsuccessfully ran for state treasurer and for the Republican nomination for U.S. senator. In 2014, when he sought the Senate nomination, he said being LGBT is a choice and made this statement during a campaign stop:
"If we protect LGBT behavior, what other behaviors are we going to protect? Are we going to protect pedophilia? Are we going to protect polyamorous marriage relationships? Are we going to protect people who have fetishes? I mean, what's the logical extension of this?"
And in a 2012 blog post, he asserted that employers should have the right to discriminate against LGBT people or refuse to cover contraceptives in employees' health insurance, based on the employer's religious beliefs.
He also has said climate change is not real and that environmental activists are using it as an excuse to redistribute wealth, and he has embraced the theory that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and was therefore ineligible to be president.
Some of his opponents said he was uniquely unqualified to be the Agriculture Department's top scientist, as he has no background in agriculture or the natural sciences. "Sam Clovis was almost a comically bad nominee, even for this administration," Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, a member of the Agriculture Committee, said in a statement Thursday, according to the Post. "He is inarguably unqualified, and he is wrong on almost every major issue relevant to the chief scientist post to which he was nominated. His nomination is all too typical of the anti-science agenda and the know-nothingism pushed by President Trump and his administration. But President Trump already knew that when he nominated Mr. Clovis, and that is not why his nomination was abruptly pulled today. Not because of his association with birtherism or as a climate change denier, or his other repugnant assertions." Lisa Archer of the environmental group Friends of the Earth said Clovis should not serve anywhere in the administration.
The Human Rights Campaign said Clovis is among the worst of Trump's nominees. "Sam Clovis has opposed equality for LGBTQ people at practically every turn and even pushed the unscientific nonsense that being LGBTQ is a choice," said HRC government affairs director David Stacy. "It's disconcerting that the Trump-Pence administration continues to nominate candidates who are as extreme as they are unqualified. Sam Clovis certainly fit that description, and while his nomination has today been withdrawn, it's absolutely essential that the Senate reject the scores of other dangerous nominees this administration continues to push forward."
