President-elect Donald Trump has offered the position of attorney general to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and the position of CIA director to Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., according to sources close to the transition.
Sessions’s offer was finalized Thursday and the senator has been working with staff to lay the groundwork for an official announcement, said one person close to the transition, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Two sources who have spoken directly with Trump officials said Pompeo had been offered and accepted the job of CIA director. They asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the process.
President-elect Donald Trump has asked Michael Flynn, a retired lieutenant general with a record of incendiary statements about Muslims, to be his White House national security adviser, a person close to the transition confirmed Thursday night.
At the same time, Trump is soliciting the help of Mitt Romney, a mainstream consensus figure who had been the face of the Republican resistance to Trump’s candidacy, in assembling his government.
Trump sought a meeting with Romney, scheduled for this weekend, to broker peace – and Sessions, a vice chairman of Trump’s transition, told reporters that Trump could consider the 2012 GOP presidential nominee for an administration position, perhaps secretary of state.
The presence of Flynn and Romney in Trump’s orbit sends mixed signals to already jittery leaders around the globe, as well as officials in Washington’s foreign policy community, about the tone and substance of the Trump administration’s posture to the world.
Flynn, who would hold the most powerful national security position, is a retired three-star general and decorated intelligence officer who established a close relationship with Trump while campaigning at his side this year. His behavior and a string of controversial and dark statements about Islam, among other topics, have alarmed many of his former colleagues.
Trump’s selection of Flynn, which was first reported by the Associated Press, comes after the president-elect enraged Democrats and civil rights groups by appointing Stephen K. Bannon, former chairman of Breitbart News, an alt-right news site that has become a forum for the white nationalist movement, as his chief strategist and senior counselor in the White House.
The Washington Post’s Robert Costa, Greg Miller and Jerry Markon contributed to this report.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
