One Democratic senator said she needs to see the background checks on Trump’s incoming Cabinet selections.
Multiple Democratic and Republican senators on Sunday signaled they will grill President-elect Donald Trump’s choices to lead the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon.
Earlier this month, Trump nominated former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to become his director of national intelligence (DNI) and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be his secretary of defense. Both positions require confirmation by the Senate.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on CNN that his panel will have “lots of questions” for Gabbard, singling out her meeting as a congresswoman with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad as a point of contention.
“She met with Bashar Assad. We’ll want to know what the purpose was,” he said. “We’ll want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she’s made and get them into full context.”
Also Sunday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told the network that she believes Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer, is “unqualified” to head up the Pentagon and also criticized the choice of Gabbard for DNI.
“I do think that we have a real deep concern whether or not she’s a