Two of the five people Trump cited Monday have private sector backgrounds. One of them, George Papadopoulos, is a 2009 college graduate and an international energy lawyer. Papadopoulos had previously advised Ben Carson’s presidential campaign and worked as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute before joining the London Center of International Law Practice, which describes itself as dedicated to “peace and development through international law and dispute resolution.”

Papadopoulos’ LinkedIn page boasts about his role at the 2012 meeting in Geneva of Model U.N., the student role-playing exercise on international diplomacy. It adds that he has “had experience lobbying foreign policy resolutions on Capitol Hill by means of coherent and concise arguments.”

Another private-sector Trump adviser is Carter Page, a former investment banker and global energy consultant who graduated from the Naval Academy, according to his online biography. In discursive online blog postings about foreign policy which invoke the likes of Kanye West, Oprah Winfrey, and Rhonda Byrne’s self-help bestseller The Secret, Page has blamed the U.S. for ” misguided and provocative actions” towards Russia — notable in light of Trump’s friendly words for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Specifically, Page has accused the State Department’s top official for Ukraine and Russia, Victoria Nuland, of “fomenting” the 2014 revolution that overthrow Ukraine’s government — a charge often lodged by Moscow and strongly disputed by the Obama administration.