Role: President, American Accountability Foundation (AAF)
Organization: American Accountability Foundation (Washington, D.C.)
Category: Trump Administration Ally / Civil Service Dismantling

Summary

Tom Jones is the president of the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a pro-Trump research and advocacy organization that has published online “watchlists” naming career federal civil servants it targets for removal from government. AAF’s operations represent the private-sector implementation of the Project 2025 / Schedule F agenda to replace career civil servants with politically loyal employees — systematically identifying and exposing specific individuals in a manner that USA Today, Reuters, and other outlets have characterized as a harassment campaign.

By August 2025, at least 88 of AAF’s targeted employees had left government or been placed on administrative leave. Some were fired. Others resigned out of fear of termination or reassignment. At least two employees, fearing for their personal safety, fled the United States.

AAF is not a government agency. It has no formal legal authority. Its power derives entirely from its ability to publish names, draw media attention, and coordinate with senior Trump administration officials who have formal power over the employees it targets.

Organization Background

Founding and structure: The American Accountability Foundation was founded as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a stated mission of government accountability. In practice, since Trump’s return to power in January 2025, it has operated primarily as a targeting organization against career civil servants it characterizes as insufficiently loyal or ideologically aligned with the administration.

Heritage Foundation connection: Heritage Foundation awarded AAF a $100,000 Innovation Award, recognizing AAF’s watchlist approach as aligned with Project 2025’s broader goal of restructuring the federal civil service. This connection places AAF within the Project 2025 organizational ecosystem alongside Heritage, Center for Renewing America, and other organizations that contributed to the governing blueprint.

Administration ties: Reuters reported that AAF has “ties to senior officials in the Trump administration” — the mechanism by which its targeting recommendations are acted upon by officials with actual firing and reassignment authority.

AAF’s Watchlist Operations

Original Watchlist

AAF’s original watchlist targeted federal employees across government agencies, alleging they promoted “liberal ideologies.” The targets were mostly career civil servants — employees with civil service protections, not political appointees — who serve regardless of which party controls the White House.

DEI Watch List (February 2025)

In February 2025, AAF launched a dedicated “DEI Watch List” targeting federal employees at health agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Wikipedia documents: “The website lists mostly Black people. The DEI Watch List targets employees primarily based on their personal political affiliation.”

The racial composition of the DEI Watch List — predominantly Black employees — has led civil rights organizations to characterize it as a racially targeted harassment campaign operating under the cover of anti-DEI advocacy.

Scale of Impact (as of August 2025)

• At least 175 federal employees publicly targeted by AAF
• At least 88 of those targeted employees had left government or been placed on administrative leave
• Some were fired amid Trump’s mass federal layoffs
• Others resigned out of fear of termination or reassignment
• At least two employees have fled the United States, citing fears for their personal safety

Mechanism of Harm

AAF’s operations work through a multi-step targeting chain:

1. Research and identification: AAF researches federal employees’ public records, social media, professional affiliations, and government activities
2. Publication: AAF publishes employees’ names, agencies, titles, and alleged offenses on its public websites
3. Media amplification: AAF press releases are picked up by conservative media, amplifying the targeting
4. Administration coordination: Senior Trump administration officials with whom AAF has “ties” take formal action against targeted employees
5. Outcome: Employees are fired, reassigned, placed on administrative leave, or resign under pressure

This chain transforms AAF into a private targeting apparatus for the administration’s political purge of the federal civil service — a function that the administration cannot legally perform on its own without due process, but which AAF can initiate by creating public pressure and political cover.

Legal and Ethical Concerns

Civil service protections: Career federal employees have civil service protections precisely to prevent the kind of political targeting AAF facilitates. AAF’s watchlists are designed to circumvent these protections by creating public pressure that makes it politically easier for administration officials to act against protected employees.

Racial targeting: The documented racial composition of AAF’s DEI Watch List — predominantly Black employees — raises serious civil rights concerns. Publishing names with the intent to have them fired, based substantially on race, may implicate federal civil rights statutes.

Personal safety: The fact that at least two targeted employees have fled the United States out of fear for their personal safety indicates that AAF’s publication of names has crossed from advocacy into territory that individuals reasonably experience as threats to their physical security.

Chilling effect on government: AAF’s operations create a chilling effect on federal employees’ willingness to perform their legal duties if those duties can be characterized as ideologically misaligned with the current administration. This represents a structural corruption of the non-partisan civil service that federal employees are legally entitled to operate within.

Controversies

“Doxxing” characterization: Multiple journalists and civil liberties organizations have characterized AAF’s watchlists as political doxxing — the publication of private individuals’ identifying information with the intent to expose them to harm. AAF disputes this characterization, arguing it is engaging in public accountability.

DEI list racial composition: The documented fact that AAF’s DEI Watch List “lists mostly Black people” drew significant criticism from civil rights organizations and congressional Democrats, who argued the list was not a neutral accountability mechanism but a racially targeted employment suppression tool.

Employees abroad: The departure from the United States of at least two employees targeted by AAF — citing personal safety — is among the most stark documented consequences of the organization’s operations and has been widely cited as evidence that the watchlists cross into intimidation.

Coordination with Schedule F: AAF’s targeting operations directly support the Schedule F agenda: if the administration can identify and expose career employees it wishes to remove, the legal structure of Schedule F — reclassifying them as politically removable — becomes the mechanism for acting on AAF’s targeting. The combination represents a systematic plan to replace the nonpartisan civil service with a politically loyal one.

Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Relevance

The American Accountability Foundation’s watchlist operations represent one of the most direct documented examples of private-sector coordination with the administration’s political purge of the federal civil service. A comprehensive TRC record requires:

Individual case documentation: Each employee targeted by AAF should be documented — their role, the basis for targeting, the outcome, and whether the targeting was subsequently found lawful. The cases of employees who fled the country warrant particular documentation.

Racial impact analysis: A systematic analysis of the racial composition of AAF’s watchlists, cross-referenced with outcomes (fired, resigned, reassigned), would establish whether the operation produced racially disparate impacts constituting illegal employment discrimination.

Administration coordination documentation: The “ties to senior officials in the Trump administration” that Reuters documented should be investigated and documented specifically — which officials, which communications, which actions. This is the chain that converts private targeting into official government action against protected civil servants.

Schedule F intersect: AAF’s targeting lists should be cross-referenced against Schedule F reclassification actions and mass layoffs to determine the degree to which private targeting preceded official government action against the same individuals.

Institutional accountability: A future administration seeking to restore civil service integrity will need a comprehensive record of which agencies were most affected, which career functions were disrupted, and what it cost in institutional memory and expertise to rebuild.

For Trump Supporters: Questions Worth Considering

Tom Jones runs the American Accountability Foundation, which publishes “watchlists” naming career federal civil servants targeted for removal. AAF is not a government agency and has no formal legal authority. Its power comes from publishing names, which are then acted upon by senior Trump administration officials with whom it has documented ties. By August 2025, 175 federal employees had been publicly targeted; 88 had left government or been placed on administrative leave; some were fired; others resigned out of fear. At least two employees, fearing for their personal safety, fled the United States. AAF’s DEI Watch List, according to Wikipedia’s documented description, “lists mostly Black people.” Heritage Foundation gave AAF a $100,000 Innovation Award for this work.

Here’s a question worth sitting with: Career civil servants — the people on AAF’s watchlists — are the employees who process your Social Security benefits, staff the FDA, investigate food safety outbreaks, process veterans’ benefits, and run the agencies that maintain the infrastructure of daily American life. They have civil service protections specifically so they can do their jobs regardless of who is president — so that a new administration can’t simply purge everyone who worked under the previous one. AAF’s watchlists are designed to identify specific people for removal from that protected career service. Two of those people fled the country. They were not politicians or powerful people — they were government workers doing their jobs. What principle justifies naming and publicly targeting career government workers until they flee the country?

A second question about the racial composition: AAF’s DEI Watch List “lists mostly Black people.” The stated purpose is to target employees who promoted “DEI” or “liberal ideologies.” The documented racial outcome is a list that is predominantly Black. Whether intentional or not, an employment targeting operation that produces a predominantly Black list of people to be fired from the federal government has a racial disparate impact — and it has produced real outcomes: firings, resignations, administrative leave actions. Apply the standard consistently: if a liberal advocacy organization had published a watchlist of federal employees it wanted fired, and that list turned out to be mostly white employees, would you consider that an acceptable accountability mechanism or a racially targeted harassment campaign?

If the answer is yes, then that standard applies here too. Consistent standards for powerful people aren’t partisan. They’re the foundation of any system where laws matter more than who you know.

A second question: The people documented in these profiles hold, or have held, significant power over systems that affect your life — government programs, elections, law enforcement, the economy. When powerful people act in ways that benefit themselves or their allies rather than the public they serve, the costs fall on everyone. That’s true regardless of party.

You don’t have to agree with every political perspective represented in this knowledge base. You just have to ask whether the documented facts meet your own standard for how public officials should conduct themselves. That’s a question every citizen has the right — and the responsibility — to ask.

Factual correction requests: If you believe information in this profile is incorrect, please contact factcheck@patriot.university with your name (optional), the specific claim, and any supporting documentation. We review all submissions and correct verified errors promptly.

Investigative trail pointers (public records)

Education only — verify independently. Absence of hits is not proof.

Use public-records-research-specialist, corporate-intelligence-investigator, and public-corruption-ombudsman evidence tiers.

Sources

• USA Today (August 2025): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/pro-trump-group-campaign-purge-subversive-federal-workers/85555331007/
• Reuters (August 2025): https://www.facebook.com/Reuters/posts/1299903768667019/ (Facebook mirror of Reuters report)
• Wikipedia — American Accountability Foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Accountability_Foundation
• AP (2024): https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2024/conservative-backed-group-is-creating-a-list-of-federal-workers/
• Heritage Foundation — $100,000 Innovation Award announcement
• AAF website: https://americanaccountabilityfoundation.com/