Morgan Ortagus – a high-level Trump administration official mulling a run for Congress in Tennessee – pledged to “faithfully serve the Biden administration” in a goodbye email sent to State Department colleagues in an e-mail obtained exclusively by The National Pulse.

Ortagus, a spokesman for the State Department during the Trump administration, received a preemptive “complete and total endorsement” from her former boss President Trump, in a move that has stunned the MAGA base. Filmmaker and grassroots activist Robby Starbuck has been considered the frontrunner and favorite of Trump’s base thus far in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional district.

“I couldn’t be happier because she’s an absolute warrior for America First and MAGA!” claimed the former President in a statement for his Save America PAC. The National Pulse understands that local party operatives, including architect of the recent Georgia Senate loss strategy, Ward Baker, is behind Trump’s move to endorse Ortagus, who welcomed the endorsement on Twitter, stating: “Thank you, President Trump! It was an honor working for the #AmericaFirst agenda in your administration. Like you, I’ll always fight for American greatness.”

A private email from January 19th, 2021, however, reveals Ortagus to have been plotting a career move “no matter what happened with election” and praising key Obama Biden-era official Ned Price, her replacement, as “fantastic.”

Titled “How to say goodbye?” and flagged as highly important, the email, sent one day prior to Biden’s inauguration, was sent to all career officials in the State Department’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs (GPA) and a group and a select group of officials in the Office of Public Affairs (PAO).

In the message, Ortagus divulges she would be “moving on and going back into the Navy Reserves,” before emphasizing that in doing so, she would be be “faithfully serving the incoming Biden Administration”:

As I’ve often said, no matter what happened with the election, I was moving on and going back into the Navy Reserves. Now, like most of you, I put the career hat back on (or rather my Navy uniform!) and go in to faithfully serving the incoming Biden Administration. Catch you on the other side!

Ortagus also praised her Biden-appointed successor, Ned Price, as “fantastic”:

PS—Ned is fantastic. You’re in great hands and he’s lucky to have all of you!

The leaked email follows intense scrutiny over Ortagus’s past comments attacking Trump prior to joining his administration.

“You have somebody who makes fun of people with mental and physical disabilities. That’s disgusting; there’s no other way around it,” remarked Ortagus in January 2016 during an interview with Fox News.

Ortagus, while working for a super PAC associated with Trump’s primary opponent former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, said she “fundamentally disagree[d]” with Trump’s approach to foreign policy.

“In his gut, he does not think that Americans should be, quote unquote, the policemen of the world,” she said during a 2016 panel discussion dissecting Trump’s foreign policy speech.

“I don’t see it that way. I think that America is the glue that holds the world together. … So there were points that I agreed with him today, but overall, I fundamentally disagree with his isolationist approach to foreign policy,” she added.

Ortagus and her second husband were married by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 2000.

Supporters and sympathizers note that to Ortagus’s credit, she was a diligent member of Mike Pompeo’s State Department team, and that her message about “faithfully serving” as applied to her work in the Navy reserves sounds no different to how most outgoing political appointees describe their future work for opposing administrations.

The news has caused friction inside President Trump’s Make America Great Again base, with insiders pointing to Ortagus’s recent meetings with Ivanka Trump as her father’s rationale for the endorsement. Mrs. Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were best known inside the Trump White House for promoting “moderates” and “Never Trumpers” who ended up turning on the President, especially following the January 6th Capitol protest.

The National Pulse reached out to Ms. Ortagus for comment on the matter, but at the time of publication, had not received a response.