Obama assembles his post-presidential team
TheHill: President Obama has assembled a staff led by a longtime White House spokesman to help him navigate his post-presidential career.
Obama has tapped Eric Schultz,
(Getty) currently his principal deputy press secretary, as a senior adviser at his new personal office in Washington.
Schultz will develop a strategy for Obama’s public profile and coordinate with Democrats on Capitol Hill, liberal activists and alumni from the White House and his campaigns.
“President Obama asked Eric to do this not only because he’s a gifted communicator, but because he trusts his sound judgement,” Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said in a statement.
Jarrett said Schultz, who has worked on Obama’s White House staff for six years, “has the instincts, relationships, and experience to help the president manage this transition.”
Obama will be just 55 years old when he leaves the White House on Friday and has said he plans to have an active post-presidency.
During his last press conference Wednesday, Obama said he might speak out in situations “where I think our core values may be at stake” under his successor, Donald Trump.
That includes “systematic discrimination,” suppression of voters or the press, and mass deportations of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
Schultz, who got his start in politics on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, will lead a small team of aides assisting Obama.
Former Justice Department official Kevin Lewis
will serve as primary spokesman for the former president and Caroline Adler Morales
will reprise her role as communications director to Michelle Obama.
“The president is a transformational figure in American history and he takes seriously his next role as citizen,” Schultz said in a statement. “Caroline and Kevin are two of the best communicators in the business and the president is enormously grateful they will be staying as part of his team.”
The hires were first reported by Politico.
Obama has reportedly leased office space at the World Wildlife Fund headquarters in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood, located roughly a mile from his family’s rental home in Kalorama.
That office is separate from the Obama Foundation, which is based in Chicago and run by longtime friend Marty Nesbitt and former White House political director David Simas. The foundation is tasked with raising money for Obama’s presidential library on the city’s South Side.
