Trump shuffles transition
team, eyes loyalists for Cabinet
Send a link to a friend
[November 16, 2016]
By Emily Stephenson and Steve Holland
NEW
YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump shuffled his
transition team again on Tuesday, jettisoning a national security expert
and lobbyists from his inner circle as he closed in on naming two loyal
Wall Street backers to key economic positions.
Trump, a Republican outsider who won a surprise election victory last
week, also cleared a paperwork snag that had temporarily stalled his
transition after he put his Vice President-elect Mike Pence in charge of
the process.
"Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many
other positions," Trump said on Twitter after taking his family to
dinner at 21 Club, a Manhattan restaurant, his motorcade slipping away
from reporters gathered at his apartment building.
"I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!" Trump said.
At the top of his list for senior economic positions are campaign
finance chair and Wall Street veteran Steve Mnuchin as treasury
secretary, and long-time backer and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for
commerce secretary, according to Trump ally and activist investor Carl
Icahn.
However, a well-known Republican moderate was pushed out of transition
planning. Mike Rogers, a former U.S. representative from Michigan who
had been mentioned as a possible pick for CIA director, suddenly left
the transition team.
Rogers had worked with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who on Friday
was abruptly replaced by Pence as head of the transition team.
That overhaul had put the brakes on transition talks with the White
House. Pence needed to sign a memorandum of understanding, which the
White House received on Tuesday evening.
The Trump team still needs to provide more paperwork before detailed
agency-by-agency briefings can take place, a White House spokeswoman
said. The team will need to provide a code of conduct and certify that
its transition team members do not have conflicts of interest.
"HUGE IMPLICATIONS"
Additional changes are likely. Pence and Rick Dearborn, the executive
director of the transition team, are "removing any lobbyists," a
transition aide said.
"This is to ensure President-elect Trump's commitment to ban lobbyist
involvement is being upheld at all levels of the transition," the aide
said.
Trump, who had pilloried opponents for being beholden to industry
interests during his campaign, came under fire from his frequent
sparring partner, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, for including
lobbyists on his transition team.
"Based on public reports, your transition team and your potential
cabinet include over twenty Wall Street elites, industry insiders, and
lobbyists making decisions that could have huge implications for their
clients or employers," Warren wrote in a letter.
Trump has fewer than 70 days until his Jan. 20 inauguration to settle on
Cabinet members and other senior appointees. He will eventually need to
fill roughly 4,000 open positions.
Wall Street is closely watching who Trump picks for treasury chief
because Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress, giving
Trump a clearer shot at tax and financial regulatory reforms.
Mnuchin declined to comment to reporters at Trump Tower about Cabinet
picks, but said the team was "making sure we get the biggest tax bill
passed, the biggest tax changes since Reagan."
A parade of advisers had been seen going in and out of Trump's building
on Tuesday, including U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, touted as a
possible secretary of defense or attorney general.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who ran against Trump for the Republican
presidential nomination, also dropped by for a meeting, telling
reporters he was "looking forward to fighting hard to actually
accomplish and deliver the promises we made" during the election.
Bloomberg later reported that Trump was considering nominating Cruz as
attorney general.
NATIONAL SECURITY HARDLINERS?
Rogers was pushed off the team in part because Trump's advisers believed
he did not pursue Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
aggressively enough when he headed the House of Representatives
Intelligence Committee, a source familiar with the decision said.
[to top of second column] |
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appears at a
campaign roundtable event in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S.,
October 28, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
Rogers led an investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks by
militants on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The probe dismissed
many of the conspiracy theories that had been circulated by critics of
Clinton, who was then secretary of state.
Trump's team viewed the investigation as a whitewash, according to one
source familiar with the operation.
Some current U.S. intelligence officials worried that Rogers' departure
would mean Trump was leaning toward more confrontational hardliners to
lead his foreign policy team.
Two national security officials said Trump's operation had been slow to
get up to speed and had not yet engaged deeply with security and
intelligence agency personnel who were ready to start helping them.
Loyalists such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former
U.N. Ambassador John Bolton were being considered for secretary of
state, according to sources close to Trump.
Giuliani, New York's mayor at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by
Islamist al Qaeda militants, is known as a hardliner on national
security matters. Bolton is also a foreign policy hawk who said last
year the United States should bomb Iran to halt its nuclear program.
Retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, a leading candidate for Trump's
national security adviser, has called for the United States to pull back
from protecting long-time allies such as South Korea and Japan.
Trump has filled two positions so far. His choice of Republican Party
insider Reince Priebus to be White House chief of staff was heralded by
Republican leaders as an indication he wanted to work with Congress.
Republicans maintained their majority in both the Senate and House in
the election, but a number of Republicans in Congress opposed Trump's
candidacy.
However, Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist was
criticized by Democrats, civil rights organizations and some
Republicans.
They denounced the former Breitbart News chief, whose website is a forum
for the "alt-right," a loose grouping of neo-Nazis, white supremacists
and anti-Semites.
Neither Priebus nor Bannon need Senate confirmation for their posts, but
Cabinet posts do, and some of Trump's possible picks could face a
difficult time winning approval.
Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said on CNN he could not
vote to confirm Bolton unless he repudiated his support for the Iraq war
and bombing of Iran. Paul, who also ran for the 2016 Republican
presidential nomination, said he was concerned by Giuliani's work on
behalf of foreign governments.
One loyalist who will not be playing a role in Trump's Cabinet is
retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who advised Trump after dropping his
own presidential bid earlier this year.
"His life has not prepared him to be a Cabinet secretary," said
Armstrong Williams, Carson's business manager.
(Additional reporting by John Walcott, Mark Hosenball, Ayesha Rascoe,
Patricia Zengerle and Warren Strobel; Writing by Andy Sullivan and
Roberta Rampton; Editing by Will Dunham, Peter Cooney and Paul Tait)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|