Trump disavows Project 2025, but he has long-standing ties to some key architects

As President Joe Biden’s campaign seeks to rebound from his rough debate performance two weeks ago, it has increasingly tried to turn the attention to former President Donald Trump about Project 2025, an expansive conservative plan backed by more than 100 groups for Trump’s potential second administration.

Over the last week, Trump has tried to put some distance between himself and Project 2025.

"I know nothing about Project 2025," he said in a Truth Social post Friday. "I have no idea who is behind it.”

He doubled down in a social media post Thursday morning, saying, "I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it."

But many of Trump’s key allies have been directly involved in producing the project, which includes a 900-plus page policy road map and personnel database gathered by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank leading the effort.

Trump also spoke highly about the group's plans at a dinner sponsored by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, saying: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

The project’s website bills it as a “governing agenda” that would “pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.”

The website also notes that the project is backed by over 100 conservative organizations, many led by close allies of Trump, including Turning Point USA, the Center for Renewing America, the Claremont Institute, the Family Policy Alliance, the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty and America First Legal — the latter of which is led by Stephen Miller, a top former Trump adviser.

Former Trump administration officials who have been directly affiliated with Project 2025 include former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and former Justice Department senior counsel Gene Hamilton.

Vought, one of the key authors of Project 2025, is also the Republican National Committee’s platform policy director.

The RNC this month adopted its official policy platform for the 2024 election cycle, a document that is less conservative than the Project 2025 handbook — including on key issues like abortion.

Despite the differences between the official platform and Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation is intertwined with the RNC and has been for years.

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation told NBC News that it will have a sponsored presence at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, as it did at the GOP conventions in 2016 and 2012.

The group was also intimately involved with Trump's transition to the White House in 2016. Beginning that August, top Heritage officials — including Ed Meese, Ed Feulner, Bill Walton and Kay Coles James — became key players in identifying personnel to fill out the administration.

The Trump campaign declined to comment on who could be a part of a 2025 transition team. Typically, a party’s nominee selects a transition team several months before the general election.

In a statement to NBC News, Biden campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitka called Project 2025 "extreme," and said it's, "written and led by [Trump's] own inner circle — the same extremists who stacked Trump’s first administration with loyalists and fired anyone who opposed his dangerous instincts, and the same enablers who will help Trump go even further to ‘terminate’ the Constitution, get ‘revenge’ on his enemies, and govern as a ‘dictator on day one’ if he wins this November. Donald Trump and Project 2025 are one in the same — and they’re both going to lose this November.”

Although the RNC’s official platform and Project 2025 differ, the goals espoused in Project 2025 are similar to some of the campaign promises Trump makes at his rallies.

He has promised to cut the Education Department, mirroring Project 2025’s proposal that “the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”

He has also promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, alleging that the justice system under the Biden administration is “two-tiered” and “weaponized.”

Project 2025’s handbook echoes that, saying the Biden administration has executed an “unprecedented politicization and weaponization of the [Justice] department,” which demands “a comprehensive response from the next Administration.”

Still, Trump’s campaign denies that the authors of Project 2025 are in any way shaping his plans for a potential administration.

Senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement last year that “unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official.”