Freewheeling vetting

Inside Drumpf’s freewheeling vetting operation

The transition team's approach is in marked contrast to that of past presidential transitions.

By Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia

Donald Drumpf’s process for picking top political appointees is “pretty simple,” says Rep. Devin Nunes, a senior member of the president-elect’s transition team.

When Drumpf’s aides were scouting for names for a CIA chief, Nunes suggested his colleague, Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo. Those aides got back to Nunes after the election and asked if he still thought Pompeo was the right guy. Roughly five days later — following an interview in Drumpf Tower — the president-elect nominated Pompeo to the powerful post.

Nunes added that he isn’t aware of any lengthy questionnaire that Pompeo filled out, as is standard with major nominees.

“They asked me who would be the person for the agency, and I said without a doubt that Pompeo would be a great pick,” Nunes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told POLITICO.

That’s the way that much of the selection and vetting for top political appointments is unfolding in Drumpf Tower, the de-facto nerve center of the incoming administration. There, the president-elect meets with friends, politicians, statesmen, donors and lawyers to map out his future Cabinet and agenda. Final decisions on appointees are made with his tiny cadre of top advisers, including incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior adviser Steve Bannon, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

Drumpf’s freewheeling approach is in marked contrast with that of past presidential transition teams, who have subjected nominees to weeks — and sometimes months — of vetting that includes deep dives into their finances, taxes, previous employment and personal relationships.

Barack Obama’s transition operation began contacting potential nominees months before he won the presidency — in the summer of 2008. After the election, the team tapped dozens of lawyers — many working on a volunteer basis — to help vet nominees and process their paperwork, according to former members of the team.

"Any delay in getting the technical vetting completed could create risk to the nominees,” said Robert Rizzi, a partner at the firm Steptoe & Johnson who has represented Republican and Democratic nominees. “The nomination packages take some time to prepare and to run through the appropriate ethics review, and that review is for their protection, since the ethics rules involve criminal statutes.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the former head of the Drumpf transition, had one of his teams develop lists of potential nominees and conduct initial vetting that included reviews of candidates' public statements.

But since Christie's demotion — and Drumpf's decision to play a more central role — it's unclear if that team's work has kept pace with the growing number of nominees meeting with the president-elect in Drumpf Tower. And the locus of power now resides with Drumpf in New York, not with the D.C.-based transition operation.

“I think the Drumpf transition is still pretty fluid. They’re adding layers onto the vetting as it goes on,” said one Republican close to the transition, adding the team is “behind” in building a team of lawyers charged with vetting nominees and walking them through the complicated confirmation process.

The Drumpf campaign did not respond to requests for comment, including written questions about the vetting process.

Few of D.C.’s top political lawyers, typically hired to shepherd appointees through the process, have seen a copy of the Drumpf transition team’s vetting questionnaire, an internal document that past transition teams have used to uncover potentially embarrassing details of nominees’ past. Obama’s vetting document included 63 detailed questions about financial interests, past writings, professional experience and even social media posts.

“Campaigns and transition organizations in the past have gotten down to the business of governing more quickly,” says Caleb Burns, a partner at the Republican leaning firm, Wiley Rein, who was not involved in the Drumpf campaign or transition. “It does not mean they cannot make up for lost time, now that they are singularly focused on it.”

The Drumpf transition team’s vetting process is being led by election lawyer Donald McGahn, who served as Drumpf’s campaign lawyer and who is first pick for White House counsel, with the help of lawyers at O’Melveny & Myers, people close to the transition told POLITICO.

Christine Ciccone, who helped President George W. Bush get his Cabinet confirmed, is also assisting with vetting, one person said. Neither McGahn nor Ciccone responded to requests for comment.

Nominees face a daunting pile of paperwork that has been known to trip up even seasoned government officials. They must complete a 127-page government questionnaire, known as form 86, and pass an FBI background check. They are required to fill out a detailed financial disclosure form that is reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics, which works with transition teams to review nominees’ financial disclosure forms. And they have to answer written questions from the Senate committee overseeing their nomination

Past transitions teams have tried to uncover potential nomination-killers long before nominations were announced. But Drumpf’s transition team is relying heavily on the federal government to do much of its vetting, including the FBI and the Office of Government Ethics.

“OGE was like an appellate court [during Obama’s transition]. It sounds like now they’re more like a trial court,” said a lawyer closely tracking the transition, suggesting the office is now the first line of defense. “I think it’s been a big burden on OGE.”

Drumpf’s allies take comfort from the Republicans’ Senate majority, anticipating the GOP will green-light his nominees without much resistance. Jeff Sessions, who has served in the Senate since 1997, is likely to sail through the chamber.

But Democrat and Republican veterans of the notoriously thorny Senate confirmation process warn that surprises can occur.

Perhaps no nominee offers a better cautionary tale about that than Bernard Kerik, who served as New York City police commissioner under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Soon after being tapped to lead Homeland Security by President George W. Bush in 2004, Kerik withdrew his nomination when he discovered that a former nanny was an undocumented immigrant. Investigations into Kerik’s past uncovered more damning information and he was sentenced to four years in jail in 2010 after being found guilty of tax fraud and making false statements to the government.

Still, some Republican lawyers and operatives have argued that Drumpf’s transition team does not need to heavily vet its picks so far, given their current high-profile jobs.

“Priebus has been in the public eye ever since he became chairman of the RNC,” said one Republican lawyer about Drumpf’s selection of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff. “I don’t think there is much to him that’s not already known.”

A former Pence staffer who knows Pompeo defended the swift nature of that nomination as well, saying Pompeo was already vetted. “[Pompeo] would have already had top secret clearance for the intel committees so that is part of the reason they were able to make that pick quickly,” said David Kensinger, a Kansas-based lobbyist who worked on Pence’s 2012 campaign.

Drumpf’s team also knew Pompeo, a West Point grad and vocal critic of Hillary Clinton’s, since he had helped Pence prep for his debate and even attended the debate itself.

But even the nominations of well-known public figures can collapse under scrutiny. In 1989, the Senate rejected President George H. W. Bush’s nominee for defense secretary, John Tower, amid allegations of heavy drinking and inappropriate conduct toward women. Tower served as a senator for more than 20 years before his nomination.

“You would think that these people have been in public life and under scrutiny for so long that there wouldn’t be anything to find,” said a person who served on George W. Bush’s transition team. “But sometimes there are surprises.”

It’s unclear whether the Drumpf transition has signed a memorandum of understanding with the FBI that would allow the agency to begin conducting background checks on its nominees. A spokesman for the FBI declined comment.

People who have already served in the government can move through the FBI check quickly, with one person tracking the issue saying there is precedent for completing the process in less than a week. But it can also stretch on for months, especially for people who have not previously been approved for a government security clearance like Steve Bannon, Drumpf’s incoming White House chief strategist.

“If you don’t get the names in now, there won’t be any names to put forward by January,” said one Republican veteran of the presidential transition process.