Pentagon official resigns after Trump purges defense board and fills it with loyalists

Mr Trump has staffed the Defense department with people loyal to him

A Pentagon official who survived Donald Trump's purge of top defense officials has resigned and denounced the president.  

Steve Blank was one of the only people on the Defense Business Board who survived Mr Trump's firing spree of Pentagon officials. The president replaced nine members of the board with his own loyalists, including people like former Trump campaign staffer David Bossie and his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.  

Chris Miller, the acting Secretary of Defense - himself a Trump loyalist installed to replace Mark Esper - said he was "proud to welcome each of these new members to the Defense Business Board" and that "these individuals have a proven record of achievement within their respective fields and have demonstrated leadership that will serve our Department, and our nation well" in a statement.  

Mr Blank refused to continue serving on the board once it had been filled with presidential yes-men.  

In Mr Blank's resignation letter, he compares the US under Trump to that of a dictatorship consolidating power and influence in a small group of individuals loyal to the president.  

"When other nations required loyalty pledges to a party and launched ideological purges of their best and brightest, we recognised that they did so because they were weak. Their ideas and values could not withstand dissent or discussion," he wrote. "In exchange for ideological purity, the abrupt termination of more than half of the Defense Business Board and their replacement with political partisans has now put the nation's safety and security at risk."

He then wrote that his service at the Defense department was "a service to the country not to a party" before resigning his position.  

In addition to the firings on the Defense Business Board, Mr Trump also fired numerous senior Pentagon officials as well.  

On 9 November Mr Trump fired then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Mr Esper's relationship with Mr Trump had been strained when the former Secretary of Defense refused to back the president's desire to invoke the Insurrection Act against Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer.    

Mr Esper was also working with Congress to rename a number of US military bases whose namesakes are Confederate military figures. Mr Trump has been vocally opposed to the effort to rename the military bases and has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorisation Act if language mandating the name changes was not removed.  

The day after Mr Trump removed Mr Esper, other Pentagon officials resigned.  

The chief of staff to the secretary of defense, Jen Stewart, resigned, as did the undersecretary for of defense policy, James Anderson and the undersecretary for defense for intelligence and security Joseph Kernan.  

Each of those spots was eventually filled with a Trump loyalist; Anthony Tata, Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Kash Patel, respectively.