President-elect Donald Trump's transition team will lean on private companies to conduct background checks and vet potential Cabinet members in his administration, per a new report from CNN.
A source within Trump’s team cited the slow speed and rigor of the standard FBI screenings for their departure from the typical process, saying that the Trump team is worried delays could impede Trump’s plans for his early days in office.
FBI-led background checks are a routine part of the nomination process, though they aren’t a formal legal requirement. FBI screenings are required to grant national security clearances, which would be required for controversial nominees like Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard to perform their jobs. However, Trump's extensive power as the head of the executive branch could offer him a way around this formality. He could simply order that his appointees be granted the appropriate clearances.
Some national security experts say the move is in line with Trump’s skepticism toward the national security apparatus. D.C. security attorney Dan Meyer told CNN that Trump’s team has little interest in the norms of staffing his administration.
“[Trump’s transition staff] don’t want the FBI to coordinate a norm; they want to hammer the norm,” Meyer said.
American Enterprise Institute Foreign Policy Director Kori Schake called circumventing FBI vetting a “terrible idea” in an interview on Thursday with PBS’s Margaret Hoover.
“It will create the perception of corruption and foreign influence in a way that will actually be bad for the Trump administration, in addition to bad for the country,” Schake said.
The thoroughness of private background checks is uncertain, too. Details emerged on Wednesday of sexual assault allegations against Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, that were reportedly not present in vetting reports by the transition team.
“This alleged incident didn’t come up,” an unnamed higher-up in the transition team told Vanity Fair.
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