By Aaron Blake, The Washington Post (c) 2024
It seems unlikely that President-elect Donald Trump’s various Cabinet picks will be confirmed via recess appointments or without FBI background checks.
Both are ideas that Trump and his team have floated to avoid the meddlesome problems involved in actually winning the votes they need – even as they have a majority-Republican Senate. Despite that majority, it only takes a small handful of GOP senators to thwart those plans.
Still, the process by which we get to these actual confirmations has been something to behold.
The founders gave Congress the power of advice and consent, but a remarkable number of Republican lawmakers seem happy to just skip over to the “consent” part.
They don’t seem to care about the power the Constitution gives senators to sign off on Trump’s picks, nor do they seem to care to learn much about skeletons in people’s closets that could seemingly pose problems for their service and possibly for the country.
I wrote a bit about this last month, when I noted how several high-profile Republicans were basically saying that the Senate should approve whomever – and do whatever – Trump wanted. Such was the nature of his resounding win and mandate, they argued.
Never mind that these senators are also duly elected and empowered to vote, including on Cabinet nominees – something the founders regarded as an important check on the president. Also never mind that Trump’s victory ranks among the smaller ones both historically and recently, and that we’ve learned that a majority of Americans actually voted for someone not named Trump.
But in a party in which fealty to Trump has increasingly become both political currency and a self-preservation strategy, some just keeping pushing toward abandoning their own prerogatives – and flaunting it.
The most recent examples involve FBI background checks, which loom over a number of Trump’s picks. (The Trump campaign said Tuesday that it reached an agreement with the Justice Department to conduct background checks, but it didn’t say whether all nominees would undergo them.)
That’s most notably the case right now with defense secretary hopeful Pete Hegseth, who paid off a sexual assault accuser, who was once labeled an abuser of women by his own mother (who has since disowned that sentiment), and who the New Yorker just reported was accused by co-workers at a veterans’ advocacy group of drinking on the job, sexist behavior and financial mismanagement. Hegseth’s camp has called the latest claims “outlandish” and blamed them on “a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s.”
All would seem relevant to whether Hegseth can run a gargantuan institution that not only includes millions of people but is also responsible for protecting the American homeland. It’s a big job.
But some Republicans seemingly aren’t at all interested in getting to the bottom of these matters. And they aren’t afraid to make that abundantly clear.
Some senators have preemptively declared their support for Hegseth and other controversial picks very early in the process and before a true review can take place. Others who have met with Hegseth this week reportedly didn’t even broach these topics. And some are even downplaying the need for the traditional FBI background check that’s usually involved in confirming people for high-level government jobs.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who will chair the Senate Finance Committee that will hold confirmation hearings for several Trump nominees, said Monday that he would take whatever background-check information the Trump team gives him.
“No, I’ll let that be a decision that President Trump makes,” Crapo told CNN when asked if he would insist on FBI background checks. “My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) offered similar comments last week.
“I don’t think the American public cares who does the background checks,” Hagerty told ABC News. “What the American public cares about is to see the mandate that they voted in delivered upon.”
“The transition team has been working for months to prepare for this. I’m certain that there was significant vetting that has taken place, it has for every candidate,” Hagerty added.
In fact, Hagerty made these comments just days after another Trump pick, Matt Gaetz for attorney general, went down in flames in part because of his own personal problems and the looming threat of a House ethics report.
And counter to Hagerty’s assurances, the vetting of Hegseth does not appear to have been particularly robust. The Washington Post has reported that Trump’s transition team was caught off-guard by the detailed revelations of an alleged 2017 sexual assault in a California hotel room and worried about what else would come out about Hegseth. He was not charged, and his team said his later payment to the woman was made to avoid possible problems with his employer, Fox News.
(“There’s a lot of frustration around this,” a person involved in the process said at the time, adding that Hegseth “hadn’t been properly vetted.”)
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) also dismissed allegations against Hegseth by calling them a “side issue” and suggesting sometimes soldiers like him can be “wild childs.”
“Again, they’re throwing disparaging remarks at someone who has earned a great deal of credibility,” Lummis said.
Other Republicans have stopped short of insisting on FBI background checks, while suggesting that they still want them, CNN reported.
Some of them have suggested that someone else – not the FBI that Trump so reviles – could handle the process. But federal law enforcement has access to tools and databases that outside background checks wouldn’t, raising the prospect that key information could be missed.
You could be forgiven for thinking the Trump team just doesn’t want anything derogatory to come out of a background check because they want their picks confirmed.
The problem is that, as we’ve learned in recent weeks, these things still have a way of coming out. A background check could provide some clarity, even if Hegseth’s problems aren’t as serious as they might seem. And even aside from that, these issues could still rear their heads at a later date, even privately. If the allegations against Hegseth have merit, for instance, putting someone like him in charge of the Defense Department would seem a huge risk for the country.
It appears unlikely Trump will actually get what he wants. The GOP will have six-vote Senate majority, so just a few GOP senators would need to insist in the FBI background checks to earn their votes, as long as all Democrats vote against Trump’s nominees. And some of those Republicans have suggested it’s indeed a prerequisite.
Even the comments from Republicans that come up shy of insisting on the FBI background checks could be read as Republicans trying not to inflame Trump but still not-so-subtly nudging him in that direction.
But all the while, we’re seeing a truly remarkable number of Republican basically shrug off any real desire to be a check on Trump, and – even more than that – broadcasting that lack of desire very publicly as if it were an asset.
It’s understandable that they would support a duly elected president of their own party. But that’s not the same as effectively saying, “Whatever he does or says is good enough for us.”
Large swaths of the GOP have effectively made that their operating principles in recent years, but it’s something to see it inch closer to becoming the stated party line for many of them.