U.S. President-elect Donald Trump picked three
conservative loyalists with hard-line views on immigration and
counter-terrorism to lead his national security and law enforcement teams,
including U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Representative
Mike Pompeo as CIA director.
Retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, who has been a
stalwart in supporting Trump's promises to take a tougher approach to militant
Islamist groups, was picked as his national security adviser.
The three choices, announced in a statement on Friday
by Trump's transition team, come as the Republican president-elect works to
fill key positions in his administration, which will take over from Democratic
President Barack Obama on Jan. 20. All three men said they have accepted
Trump's offer.
In choosing Sessions as head of the Justice Department
and the country's chief law enforcement officer, Trump rewarded a loyalist
whose tough and sometimes inflammatory statements on immigration have been
similar to his own.
One of the earliest Republican lawmakers to support
Trump's White House candidacy, Sessions opposes any path to citizenship for
illegal immigrants and was an enthusiastic backer of Trump's campaign promise
to build a wall on the border with Mexico. He has also argued for curbs on
legal immigration on the grounds that it drives down wages for U.S. workers.
A former Alabama attorney general and U.S. attorney,
Sessions, 69, could face a tough confirmation battle in the Senate, despite his
19-year tenure there. Allegations that he made racist remarks led the Senate to
deny his confirmation as a federal judge in 1986.
However, he could be helped as his status as one of
Trump's most enthusiastic backers on Capitol Hill. Trump has hired several of
Sessions' staffers, including policy chief Stephen Miller and Rick Dearborn,
who has a top job managing the transition.
"Jeff is greatly admired by legal scholars and
virtually everyone who knows him," Trump said in a statement.
Flynn, a retired U.S. Army three-star general and one
of Trump's closest advisers, was fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency in
2014, a move he has attributed to his outspoken views about combating Islamist
militancy. Other officials who worked with Flynn cited his lack of management
skills and leadership style as reasons for his firing.
An Army intelligence veteran of three decades, Flynn
was assistant director of national intelligence under Obama.
Pompeo, 52, a third-term Republican congressman from
Kansas, was a surprise pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.
He was a member of a congressional
committee that investigated a 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in
Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
Pompeo argued that the Obama administration was more concerned with protecting
the reputation of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton than with finding out
what happened.
Pompeo, a
member of the House Intelligence Committee, is a former U.S. Army officer who
founded an aerospace company in Wichita, Kansas. During his first run for
Congress in 2010, opponents charged him with outsourcing American jobs because
his company opened a factory in Mexico. Pompeo said the move helped his
business to add jobs in the United States.
Like
Sessions, Pompeo will need to be confirmed in the job by a majority vote in the
Senate. Republicans will hold at least a 51-seat majority when the chamber
convenes in January.
(Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson,
Patricia Zengerle, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Andy
Sullivan; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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