Donald Trump claims he is unaware of Project 2025, a plan to transform government, but Biden doesn’t believe it

Last week, former President Donald Trump tried to distance himself from “Project 2025,” a sweeping plan to overhaul the federal government put forward by a closely held group of conservatives.

“I don’t know anything about Project 2025,” Trump said on social media, referring to the 922-page plan proposed by a group of conservative organizations led by the Heritage Foundation. “I have no idea who’s behind it.”

Trump’s comments suggested he had nothing to do with the controversial plan or those involved in it.

But when Republicans meet in Milwaukee next week and vote to officially approve the GOP’s first new agenda since 2016 — one that will benefit Trump and Republicans across the country — that agenda will be designed and shaped by people with deep ties to Project 2025.

In May, the Trump campaign and the RNC announced their Platform Committee leadership team, the senior officials tasked with developing the Republican platform, and named Russ Vought as the Platform Committee’s policy director and Ed Martin as deputy policy director. Both have ties to Project 2025.

Vought, who previously served under Trump as director of the Office of Management and Budget, authored the chapter on “The Executive Office of the President” for the 2025 Project’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” which the 2025 Project describes as “a comprehensive policy guide for the next conservative U.S. president.”

According to the plan’s website, Vought’s Center for Renewing America is also listed among the Project 2025 advisory board members.

Martin, who was named deputy director of program policy by the Trump campaign and the RNC, is president of Eagle Forum Education. & Legal Defense Fund; Eagle Forum is also listed as part of the advisory board of Project 2025.

Other RNC platform committee members with ties to Project 2025 include Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who has been outspoken about his efforts to keep the Republican platform from softening its language on abortion. Perkins has said he is involved in crafting the 2024 platform, and the Family Research Council is also a member of Project 2025’s advisory board.

The new platform was approved Monday by a committee vote of 84-14, a source told ABC News. A vote by all Republican National Committee members to officially endorse the platform from the convention floor will take place next week, according to an RNC spokesman.

Democratic National Committee press secretary Emilia Rowland, commenting on the RNC platform, said in a statement: “The truth is that Trump literally put the architects of Project 2025 in charge of running the Republican platform, and the result is not only the most extreme platform in GOP history, but one that contains lie after lie after lie.”

“President Trump’s Agenda 47 and RNC Platform are the only policies President Trump supports for a second term,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said. “Team Biden and the DNC are LIING and spreading fear because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people. Remember, this is the same group that has been lying to the American people and covering up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for all these years.”

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris campaign is starting to run ads linking Project 2025 to Trump.

Back in April, Project 2025 senior adviser John McEntee — who previously served as Trump’s White House adviser — said he was working to integrate Project 2025 with the Trump campaign while also trying to differentiate between the two entities.

“Obviously, there will be coordination, and the president and his team will make an official announcement this summer, and we will integrate a lot of our work with them. But I think keeping the two things separate is actually the most beneficial way to do it,” McEntee told the Daily Wire’s Morning Wire.

Toward the end of Trump’s first term, McEntee was tasked with scouring federal agencies for individuals who did not fully support Trump’s agenda. In October 2020, he drafted a memo arguing that Trump should fire then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper three weeks before Esper was fired, a claim first reported by ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl in his book “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”

A key part of Project 2025 is expanding presidential authority and drastically cutting federal agencies like the Education Department — moves Trump, during his campaign, supported. The proposal also calls for revoking the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Trump said earlier this month that he does not support blocking access to mifepristone.

Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, the two worlds remain deeply intertwined. Several key former members of the Trump administration are involved in the project, including Stephen Miller, who recently helped Trump with debate prep and served as a surrogate in the spin room after CNN’s presidential debate in Atlanta — and who appears in Project 2025’s educational video “presidential administration academy” and whose organization, America First Legal, is listed among its advisory members.

The project’s advisory board also includes members of groups funded by Trump’s PAC, including the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization led by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, which received a $1 million donation from Trump’s Save America PAC in 2021.

Karoline Leavitt, currently Trump campaign press secretary, is also featured prominently in Project 2025’s “presidential administration academy” video, which the group says aims to train a new generation of conservative politicians.

The film was produced in September 2023, when Leavitt was serving as a spokesman for the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., which is a separate entity from the Trump campaign. Leavitt joined the Trump campaign in January 2024.

Other political groups and think tanks tied to Trump and his previous administration have also offered policy outlines for a potential second term, including the America First Policy Institute, which is staffed by hundreds of former Trump administration officials. Save America PAC also donated $1 million to the America First Policy Institute.

Senior Trump campaign advisers have long steered clear of all outside political groups, including the 2025 Project, saying they are “mere suggestions” and emphasizing that “none of these groups or individuals speak on behalf of President Trump or his campaign.”