President-elect Trump’s transition team is facing new questions about what progress, if any, the incoming Republican leader and his staff have made in filling hundreds of national security slots as he prepares to take over the government in just over two months.
Sources familiar with the transition operation revealed last week that Trump’s team was encountering major hurdles and rejection during its recruiting of defense and intelligence experts to join the forthcoming administration. Matters were made worse on Tuesday when former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers suddenly quit his central role in the national-security transition process.
“It was a privilege to prepare and advise the policy, personnel and agency action teams on all aspects of the national security portfolio during the initial pre-election planning phase,” Rogers, a hawkish but highly-respected GOP national security official, said in a statement.
Rogers’ abrupt departure was immediately followed by reports that Matthew Freedman, a Washington-based security consultant, would no longer be leading the National Security Council transition after Trump had him removed from the position due to concerns about his lobbying ties.
Freedman had reportedly been tasked with coordinating congratulatory phone calls between foreign leaders and Trump after his surprise election victory.
Just as the transition team was scrambling to replace Rogers and Freedman on Tuesday, a Pentagon official confirmed that not a single Trump staffer has contacted the Defense Department. State Department spokeswoman Julia Mason told the Washington Examiner on Monday that the agency is also waiting to hear from Trump’s team, while a CIA official declined to comment.
The transition team is in a state of limbo, restricted from coordinating with federal agencies until Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who took over the transition process late last week, signs an agreement with the White House that ensures neither team will disclose sensitive details about the government as they work together to ensure a smooth transition for the next administration.
“We look forward to completing that work so that we can provide the necessary access to personnel and resources to get the president-elect’s team up to speed and deliver on President Obama’s directive for a smooth transition,” a White House spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal.
Trump’s team has sought input from individuals outside of the billionaire’s close circle of advisers, especially as it struggles to recruit experts for his national security team. At least one such conversation has backfired.
“After exchange [with] Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They’re angry, arrogant, screaming ‘you LOST!’ Will be ugly,” Eliot Cohen, a former State Department official who bitterly opposed Trump’s candidacy, tweeted Tuesday morning. Cohen had reportedly been contacted by a Trump transition aide who was requesting recommendations for key national security appointments.
“They think of these jobs as lollipops,” Cohen told the New York Times, claiming that he received a sharply worded email from the same aide in response to his suggestion that Trump’s team will continue to face rejection from foreign policy recruits unless they move to appoint credible individuals to top national security posts.
Two such names being floated for a national security position of Cabinet-rank have already elicited strong reactions from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Trump is said to be considering former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who spent the final weeks of the election traversing the country with the Republican nominee, and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for secretary of state.
Nominating Giuliani, a controversial Trump loyalist with limited foreign policy experience, could submit the incoming president to charges of hypocrisy. Trump routinely criticized Hillary Clinton for allowing her charitable foundation to maintain its ties to Middle Eastern countries during her tenure as secretary of state. But as Politico reported Tuesday, Giuliani has accepted money from an exiled political party in Iran as well as a state-run oil company in Qatar.
Meanwhile, Bolton’s neoconservative foreign policy would differ greatly from the more measured “America First” vision Trump championed throughout his campaign. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a decidedly anti-interventionist figure in the GOP, said Tuesday he would do “whatever I can” to block Bolton from becoming the nation’s top diplomat.
“I can’t imagine supporting anyone who hasn’t learned the lesson of the last 20 years,” Paul said of Bolton, who has long maintained that President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein “was correct.”
“People like that really shouldn’t get within 10 miles of the State Department,” Paul added.
Considering the recent shake-ups and delayed correspondence between Trump’s transition operation and the intelligence community, it could be days or weeks until further details emerge about which individuals Trump has chosen to fill national security roles within his administration.
Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a senior adviser to candidate Trump, told reporters inside Trump Tower on Tuesday that he has no sense of timing regarding an announcement about the president-elect’s national security team.
“Before the inauguration,” he joked. “No, I don’t. It’s not proper for me to comment on it and I wouldn’t comment.”
