James Renne, part of Trump's transition team at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was hired for a senior position in the Department of Agriculture shortly after the inauguration.

But under the Bush administration, ProPublica reports, Renne worked at the Office of Special Counsel—where he conducted a vicious witch hunt against gay employees.

Undesired staffers were abruptly banished to a new office in Detroit, according to a 2013 report, and those who refused were fired. There seemed to be no reason, but investigators claimed Renne and his boss, Special Counsel Scott Bloch, "may have been motivated in their actions by a negative personal attitude toward homosexuality and individuals whose orientation is homosexual."

Renne had already been known to make anti-gay statements, and signed a 2000 letter warming that “the homosexual lobby’s power has grown exponentially."

Then there was the time Renne removed language about sexual orientation from the OSC website: “[He] depicted as intently searching the OSC website with the assistance of a senior career official to identify passages which interpreted [the nondiscrimination law] as extending protection to employees on the basis of their sexual orientation."

He then insisted that the department's IT manager remove those passages immediately.

The Office of Special Counsel was a small federal agency that protects government whistleblowers. Word about the witch hunts got out, and congressional and criminal investigations were conducted. According to the inspector general's report, Bloch once told a consultant "that there was a sizable group of homosexuals employed by OSC. What's more "he 'had a license' to get rid of homosexual employees and he intended to 'ship them out.'”

Investigators also found "crude and vulgar messages containing anti-homosexual themes" in Bloch's office emails, as well as references to his predecessor, Special Counsel Elaine Kaplan, as a "lesbian activist," a "public lesbian," a "well-known gay activist” on his social media. Authorities found that Bloch "may have been heavily influenced by Mr. Renne" when it came to the plan to banish gay workers.

The investigation dragged on for years, with the inspector general's report based on interviews with more than 60 people and examination of more than 100,000 emails. In the end, the targeted workers settled out of court, though the terms were never made public.

Neither Renne nor the Department of Agriculture have commented about the issue. Bloch, meanwhile, told ProPublica the report was “filled with untruth, outright falsehoods, and innuendo.”