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The team is also seeking help from former officials as they don’t expect current Pentagon leaders to be cooperative or particularly competent, the former official said.
Since the beginning of this year, the White House has purged Pentagon officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the White House and installed those who can be trusted to make the president’s wishes come true. On Monday, Trump sacked Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and a day later three other senior officials were replaced with loyalists.
“Essentially, anyone who would have been helpful left the Pentagon by withdrawing or being fired,” the former official said.
Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, was almost unanimously confirmed as Trump’s first secretary of defense in January 2017 and is well regarded on both sides of the aisle. Mattis’ relationship with Trump deteriorated during his tenure, ending with his resignation in December 2018 following the president’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.
Mattis initially avoided commenting on Trump’s presidency after he left, but broke his silence this summer, denouncing the president as a threat to the Constitution after he sought to deploy active-duty troops to U.S. cities to quell demonstrations for civil rights.
Still, Biden’s team is cautious of associating too closely with Mattis, who has implemented some controversial Trump policies, including a ban on transgender people from serving in the military, another former official said. defense.
People have noted that Mattis’ team members have yet to be officially offered jobs in administration.
A spokesperson for Biden’s transition team declined to comment. Mattis also declined to comment.
Some former Mattis managers have also proactively reached out to Biden’s team to offer advice. A former senior administration official said he recommended Biden’s transition team recruit several people appointed by Mattis who are still on duty and who are “non-partisan in nature.”
Biden on Tuesday announced his “agency review team” for the Pentagon, a group that will coordinate the transition even as the Trump administration blocks the formal process from moving forward.
The team will be led by Kathleen Hicks, a senior politician in the Obama administration who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The team also includes several other prominent women in defense policy who have close ties to Michèle Flournoy, a former Under-Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, widely regarded as one of the top contenders for the post of Secretary of Defense for Biden. Also on the team are Christine Wormuth, who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy between 2014 and 2016, and Susanna Blume, who led the defense program at the Center for a New American Security.
Bryan Bender contributed to this report.
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