Gregory Wischer, a young deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Interior Department, appears to have the attention of the president of the United States. Trump has mentioned the little-known political appointee by name on his Truth Social platform no fewer than 17 times since May 2026, including four posts and counting this month.
On Aug. 28 for instance, Trump posted a Truth Social missive that quoted Wischer at length lauding the appearance of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has emerged as a source of relentless controversy for the White House ever since Trump undertook to renovate the famous monument. The renovation has been mired in mishaps and scandal and Trump has turned to Wischer to help do PR for the project. “From Greg Wischer at the United States Department of the Interior,” Trump wrote in the August post, quoting Wischer. The reflecting pool is “Coming out great!” and “Will be a beauty.”
An earlier Trump post, from July, had Wischer stating: “Photo just taken of the Reflecting Pool. As you can see, the water is crystal clear.”
Also in July, Trump posted a memo attributed to Wischer in which he wrote: “The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool — just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
As Trump sinks in the polls and the GOP despairs about its electoral prospects, as his war against Iran rages with no end in sight and inflation remains stubbornly elevated, the president continues to be laser focused on an array of building and renovation projects in Washington D.C, including the construction of a triumphal arch. He has also staged a series of spectacles in the city, including a UFC match at the White House in June and an IndyCar Grand Prix race on the National Mall in August, many of which centered around America’s 250th birthday celebrations. Wischer, a former mining executive and industry advocate, has emerged as one of the key figures helping facilitate that agenda.
From his perch as a top aide at the Interior Department, which has authority over many of the monuments and facilities in Washington D.C., Wischer seems to be one of the president’s go-to sources for information about the progress of his construction and renovation preoccupations. Beyond that, Wischer has held numerous meetings over the last year with companies and individuals involved in staging Trump’s D.C. spectacles.
In an email to Public Domain, an Interior Department spokesperson called Wischer “an American Patriot who has devoted his time here at the Department making our nation’s capital the shining beacon it was meant to be.”
According to Interior Department visitor logs reviewed by Public Domain, Wischer met on March 30 with David Schutzenhofer, the general manager of Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. who the New York Times reported helped plan and shape the troubled reflecting pool renovations. Between late January and early March, Wischer appears to have hosted several representatives of both Harbinger, the events production company that coordinated logistics for the Grand Prix race last month, and Tait Global, the production company that built the stage for the June Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House. On one of those visitor log entries, “UFC” is written next to Wischer’s name.
In February and again in April this year, visitor logs show that Wischer hosted William Kelleher of the White House Domestic Policy Council and one Matthew Taylor. The latter is most likely Trump’s culture czar who was appointed by the president to “rubber-stamp approvals” for Trump’s ballroom and triumphal arch, according to The New York Times. Also in May, Wischer met with Liam Cutri-French, a civil engineer working for the National Park Service’s National Mall and Memorial Parks unit.
“It’s a testament to the madness of our era that Trump can marshal loyal political staffers to dutifully build monuments to himself all over the nation’s capital,” said Alan Zibel, a researcher with the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen. “Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is a wealthy man who could be doing many other things with his time, but has instead decided to destroy his own reputation and redirect his agency’s staffers toward the goal of obeisance to Trump and his insatiable desire for adulation.”
Trump’s “vanity projects,” as his critics call them, were not always Wischer’s focus at the Interior Department. The former critical minerals consultant joined the federal agency early in 2025 and served for a time as deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management.
During his tenure, Wischer has been a point person for oil industry players looking to influence policy and helped craft talking points that Utah Sen. Mike Lee used to pitch his controversial public land sell-off scheme last year, as Public Domain previously reported. He also authored memos requiring Burgum to personally sign off on all wind and solar projects and directing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to aggressively enforce bald and golden eagle protections against wind developers.
Wischer has other close connections to the White House. His wife, Joanna Miller Wischer, is a longtime MAGA loyalist who served in both Trump administrations. She has repeatedly peddled conspiracies about the 2020 election, describing it in Truth Social posts as having been rigged and “stolen by the Left.” She was reportedly the secret author of a December 2020 report that alleged Dominion Voting Systems rigged its voting machines to secure President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump.
Miller Wischer has also been a staunch defender of Jan. 6 defendants. At a December 2022 fundraiser for the Patriot Freedom Project, an organization that provides legal and financial assistance to Jan. 6 defendants, she described the rioters as “victims of a gross, disgraceful, and evil weaponization of the U.S Department of Justice by Joe Biden and other corrupt officials in our U.S. Congress, specifically the January 6th hoax committee.”
Miller Wischer now serves as deputy director of the Made in America Office within the president’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which focuses on boosting American manufacturing.
Both Wischer and his wife, as political appointees, were required to file financial disclosures that include one another’s assets and income. An analysis by the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan ethics watchdog group, uncovered several discrepancies between Wischer’s disclosure and that of his wife. Wischer’s disclosure listed a SPAXX money market fund in his Roth IRA valued at $15,001 to $50,000, while his wife listed the account as valued at 1,001 to 15,000. Wischer also lists employment salary and severance of more than $55,000 from Westwin Elements, a nickel refining company where he worked as an executive vice president in 2022 and 2023. His wife omits that salary and severance entirely from her disclosure.
In May, the Campaign Legal Center wrote to the Office of Government Ethics to flag these and other errors. “We are alerting you of these issues because of the conspicuous inconsistencies between the financial disclosures of spouses,” the Campaign Legal Center wrote. “The disclosures are obviously incorrect and require amendments to help determine if the inaccuracies are intentional.” CLC told Public Domain that it has received no response from the Office of Government Ethics.
The disclosures “are currently being reconciled,” the Interior Department spokesperson told Public Domain. OMB did not respond to a request for comment.
DOI visitor logs also detail another notable occurrence involving Wischer. On April 9 of this year, Wischer hosted Adam Suess at the Interior Department. Suess served as a top Trump official at DOI, working closely with Wischer during his tenure. Suess left his high-ranking Interior post in February for a job at international law firm Squire Patton Boggs, where he is now lobbying for oil, gas and mining companies, among others. As a former senior Interior Department official, Suess is barred for one year from communicating or appearing before the Interior Department with the intent to influence its decisions, raising questions about the propriety of his visit to the agency in April.
Suess told Public Domain his visit with Wischer “was fully compliant with all rules and regulations.”
“I wasn’t with Greg on behalf of any client,” Suess wrote in an email. “We didn’t discuss any Interior business. We didn’t talk about anything of consequence. We talked about our families and our friends. We were checking in on each other, which as an American protected by the rights granted to me I am fully entitled to do.”
The Interior spokesperson also said Suess and Wischer discussed each other’s families.
Wischer, meanwhile, continues to have Trump’s ear. On Sept. 7, Trump wrote four posts in a single day, all of them quoting Wischer and focused on renovation projects in the Capitol.
“From Greg Wischer at the United States Department of the Interior,” read one of the posts. “The Joan of Arc statue in Meridian Park was cleaned and waxed. Here are photos taken today!”
Can Trump and his accomplices be arrested (on January 20th 2029, if not before) for vandalism and destruction of public property? It's not his to do whatever he pleases. It belongs to US. He's done so much damage to our capital city already. Is there no way to stop it?