Former Project 2025 director downplays Trump ties, but says he hopes he’d implement the plan

(CNN) — Paul Dans, the former director of the group behind the conservative policy roadmap Project 2025, said on Monday he’s not worried about Vice President Kamala Harris invoking the proposal against Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate and said he’d like to see the former president implement the plan if he’s returned to the White House.

Dans told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in his first TV interview since stepping down as director in late July that the former president “had nothing to do with” the Heritage Foundation-backed policy playbook forged by dozens of different organizations.

But Dans, the former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management under Trump, said he’s been to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort on “several” occasions and has met with Trump campaign leadership “from time to time.” He said he’d “shaken hands” with Trump, most recently at a Christian media convention in Tennessee where the former president spoke in February.

His comments come as Harris and her allies have sought to link Trump to Project 2025 to portray him as extreme. Democrats have repeatedly pointed to the set of conservative policies as Trump’s and the Republican Party’s roadmap if they return to the White House and control Congress, often highlighting proposals on reproductive health care, prescription drug costs and education policy. The vice president often references to the plan to suggest Trump wants to take the country “back to the past,” while insisting to supporters, “We are not going back.”

Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement with Project 2025, saying on Truth Social earlier this year that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” But at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found earlier this year, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.

Dans said Trump himself was not involved in crafting the proposal and said the number of former Trump administration employees contributing to the project was an example of “natural” coordination between former colleagues.

“(Trump) personally didn’t have anything to do with it. Certainly, a lot of folks, you know, worked on it, came out of the Trump administration. But that’s natural for any Republican administration. You’re going to have the carry over for the next one,” he said.

Asked about Trump’s criticism of the plan, Dans said he didn’t know what the former president was specifically referring to.

“It was really a coming together of the conservative movement,” Dans said at another point. “Our side’s always been prone to infighting, and what we were able to do here was bring together 110 groups and really lay out a common sense plan.”

When asked about his decision to step down as the group’s director – which Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita welcomed with a statement warning groups like Project 2025 not to “misrepresent their influence with President Trump” or “it will not end well for you” – Dans again denied any ties with the Trump campaign but did not respond directly to LaCivita’s warning.

“With apologies to Mark Twain, I’d say, you know, the reports about my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” he said.

In an interview with The New York Times published Monday, Dans blamed campaign advisers LaCivita and Susie Wiles for their handling of Trump’s campaign in the past few months as Democrats pivoted to supporting Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

“Trump should be running like Secretariat at the Belmont, but instead it’s a race to the wire,” Dans told the Times.

Asked by CNN whether he thought Trump’s campaign managers are doing a good job, he told Collins, “I’m excited about the change,” alluding to high-profile additions to Trump’s team, including 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

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