President Trump has no permanent "drug czar" — the Office of National Drug Control Policy is being led by Acting Director Richard Baum, who has worked in the ONDCP since 1997. In a Jan. 3 memo, The Washington Post reports, Baum said his office "recognizes that we have lost a few talented staff members" and "the functions of the chief of staff will be picked up by me and the deputy chief of staff." The deputy chief of staff, the Post notes, is a 24-year-old named Taylor Weyeneth whose only other post-college experience was as a paid member of Trump's presidential campaign and volunteer during his presidential transition.
Weyeneth rose quickly through the ranks, in part because of the aforementioned vacancies, and aside from the questions of whether a recent college graduate with no real experience should be helping to make drug policy during a devastating opioid epidemic, the Post now reports that Weyeneth fudged his résumé. For example, he said that he had worked as a legal assistant at the New York law firm O'Dwyer & Bernstien during college for eight months longer than he really had — a discrepancy the FBI picked up, leading to a second, then a third résumé. And that job apparently did not end well.
Weyeneth was "discharged" in August 2015, partner Brian O'Dwyer told the Post. "We were very disappointed in what happened," he said, adding that he had hired Weyeneth in part because both men belonged to the same fraternity. O'Dwyer & Bernstien had trained Weyeneth in expectation that he would work there for a long while, O'Dwyer said, but Weyeneth "just didn't show."
After the Post's first report, the White House said Weyeneth would return to being White House liaison to the ONDCP, but as of this weekend, he has remained deputy chief of staff, the Post said. You can read more about his exaggerated résumé at The Washington Post.