The ‘word’ was that Michèle Flournoy was a lock….
But?
Now the whispers are that Jeb Johnson, the Obama Homeland Security boss could be in the running ….
Seems there is is some grumbling about Flournoy’s way of making money after leaving the Obama admin….
Her prominence served to highlight the absence of a Pentagon nominee during an event in Delaware on Tuesday that included Biden’s picks for secretary of state, intelligence director, chief of homeland security and United Nations ambassador, as well as White House national security adviser.
Biden has not yet made a decision and Flournoy remains very much in the running for the job, people familiar with the process said. Those people, who requested anonymity to talk about pending personnel decisions, cautioned against reading too much into the absence of Pentagon and CIA nominees in the initial round of Cabinet announcements…
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Flournoy comes from the same cadre of professionals with credentials from the Obama administration and Washington think tanks as the nominees who were announced Tuesday. She also co-founded a security consultant firm with Antony Blinken, Biden’s choice to be secretary of state.
Flournoy has ties to the defense industry, making her suspect to some liberal Democrats, but it is not clear if Biden shares that concern. Blinken will face the same scrutiny that Flournoy would about the secretive client list at their WestExec Advisors firm. Biden also bypassed liberal complaints about his choice for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, as being too hawkish….
The look for an Attorney General name….
This person is going to need strong staff backing at the top of the department in order to detangle the political policy actions Bill Barr did to accommodate Trump’s political whims and actions that sometime wasn’t so legal….
The new Attorney General is also gonna have to deal with and help the FBI , which Trump also beat on since coming into office…
Most senior Democrats and former Justice Department officials agree a top contender for the position is Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy attorney general whose tenure stretched from 2015 to the early, tumultuous days of the Trump administration. Other names under consideration include Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), former homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and former White House adviser Lisa Monaco.
Behind the scenes, each Democratic contender has a constituency as well as detractors. But whomever Biden picks will have to be confirmed by a Senate that is currently controlled by Republicans, and take command of a department wracked by accusations of politicization….
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The incoming Biden administration will have to decide how aggressively it pursues allegations of wrongdoing by its predecessors, including Trump and those close to him. Some former Justice Department officials have argued that federal prosecutors in New York or elsewhere should pursue a criminal case against Trump once he is out of office, while other former law enforcement officials have argued that doing so would be destructive to the long-term integrity of the department.
Beyond the basic question of criminal investigations, Biden’s team is also likely to wrestle with a version of the same problem the Obama administration faced in its first months — how much time and political capital to expend on the controversies and scandals of the previous administration. The Biden Justice Department will probably face decisions about how much information to share with Congress, or through Freedom of Information Act requests, about the Trump administration’s family-separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, the department’s handling of cases involving people close to the president and any internal discussions about pardons….
CIA choice…Maybe?
President-elect Joe Biden is leaning toward naming former Obama administration national security adviser Tom Donilon as his CIA director, two people familiar with the situation said.
The choice for the spymaster role is one of the toughest facing Biden as he puts together his national security team. The CIA has found itself uncomfortably embroiled in domestic politics under Donald Trump, accused by the outgoing president and his allies of seeking to tar him as an agent of Moscow and representing a “deep state” bent on undermining his policies. Whomever Biden picks will also confront an emboldened Russia and an increasingly aggressive China, along with transnational threats like climate change and pandemics….
More….