Trump will carry over more than 50 Obama administration officials
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will carry over more than 50 key Obama administration officials after Inauguration Day as the president-elect tries to ensure continuity while putting his own team in place, the transition team said Thursday.
Among them: Adam Szubin, the acting Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence whose nomination by Obama was stalled in the Senate for 20 months. He will serve as the acting Treasury secretary until Trump nominee Steven Mnuchin is confirmed by the Senate.
Trump announced his intent to nominate former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue as Agriculture secretary on Thursday, the last of 21 cabinet-level nominations.
But that also leaves more than 5,000 lower-level appointments to be made, including the important deputy and assistant Cabinet secretaries often charged with running the departments day to day. The incoming Trump administration emphasized Thursday that people would be in place to respond to national security threats or natural disasters.
"Make no mistake, we’re ready to go on day one," Trump press secretary Sean Spicer said.
Among the Obama administration officials staying on: Dabney Kern, director of the White House Military Office; Robert Work, deputy Defense secretary; Chuck Rosenberg, acting Drug Enforcement Administration chief; Nicholas Rasmussen, National Counterterrorism Center director; Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition; Susan Coppedge, ambassador-at-large on human trafficking; Tom Shannon, the undersecretary of State for political affairs; Kody Kinsley, assistant Treasury secretary for management, and Adam Szubin, acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The Senate's refusal to vote on Szubin's confirmation for nearly two years was a particular irritant to the Obama White House, given that Szubin has served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But Spicer said Thursday that no decision had been made on whether Trump would nominate any of the carryovers to serve permanently.
Treasury spokesman Daniel Watson said Thursday that Szubin would continue to serve “to ensure the smooth continuity of leadership at the Department of the Treasury." But he said that once the new secretary is confirmed and sworn in, "Mr. Szubin will leave government service to pursue other endeavors.”
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"We've appointed over 50 people in critical positions to maintain their office until we find someone to fill that position," Spicer said. "Right now our focus is on continuity of government, and on a case-by-case basis we’ll look at those people in those departments."
It's not unusual for a president to carry over appointments from the last administration, particularly in national security-related posts. President Obama kept President George W. Bush's secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, for more than two years.
Spicer said many National Security Council staff members would also continue. Most of those jobs aren't permanent White House positions, but are held by military and intelligence officials from other agencies who are detailed to the White House for temporary assignments.
The transition team also has 536 "beachhead team" members, who Vice President-elect Mike Pence said "will be reporting for duty at agencies following the inauguration, bright and early on Monday morning."
"Our job is to be ready on day one," Pence said Thursday. "The American people can be confident that we will be."
