Trump agrees to Jus­tice Depart­ment back­ground checks for his Cab­i­net nom­i­nees

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Trump agrees to Justice Department background checks for his Cabinet nominees

After months of hold­ing off on fil­ing some offi­cial tran­si­tion forms, Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump‘s team announced Tues­day that it had entered into a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the Jus­tice Depart­ment, paving the way for FBI back­ground checks.

“This agree­ment with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice will ensure Pres­i­dent Trump and his team are ready on Day 1 to begin enact­ing the Amer­i­ca First Agen­da that an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of our nation sup­port­ed on Elec­tion Day,” incom­ing Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a state­ment.

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The MOU will allow Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials to sub­mit their names for back­ground checks and secu­ri­ty clear­ances, a key pri­or­i­ty for a bipar­ti­san group of law­mak­ers after it appeared that some appointees would skip the process.

It is a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion for appointees to under­go a back­ground check, but it is not required by law, which Trump had once appeared like­ly to eschew as some of his con­tro­ver­sial Cab­i­net nom­i­nees gar­nered neg­a­tive media atten­tion.

Tul­si Gab­bard, Trump’s pick to lead the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, was once placed on a fed­er­al avi­a­tion watch­list and Defense Sec­re­tary nom­i­nee Pete Hegseth has been on the receiv­ing end of neg­a­tive reports about sex­u­al assault stem­ming from a 2017 case — prompt­ing cer­tain law­mak­ers to push for the checks.

Out­go­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) called for appointees to receive FBI back­ground checks in a let­ter this week to incom­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader John Thune (R‑SD).

“As we tran­si­tion to the 119th Con­gress, Sen­ate Democ­rats stand ready and will­ing to work with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans to pro­vide advice and con­sent as we eval­u­ate all of the incom­ing president’s nom­i­na­tions,” Schumer wrote.

“In par­tic­u­lar, we com­mit to work­ing in a bipar­ti­san fash­ion to process each nom­i­nee by review­ing stan­dard FBI back­ground-inves­ti­ga­tion mate­ri­als, sched­ul­ing hear­ings and markups in the com­mit­tees of juris­dic­tion, and con­sid­er­ing nom­i­nees on the Sen­ate floor,” Schumer con­tin­ued.

On the Repub­li­can side, Sen. Susan Collins (R‑ME) pre­vi­ous­ly told the Hill that “the FBI should do the back­ground checks, in my judg­ment.”

“I do think there will be FBI back­ground checks,” said Sen. Roger Wick­er (R‑MS) told Politi­co.

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Last week, the Trump tran­si­tion team announced it had entered into an agree­ment with the out­go­ing Biden admin­is­tra­tion to allow Trump’s tran­si­tion team to begin coor­di­nat­ing with fed­er­al agen­cies, but at the time, the agree­ment did not stip­u­late FBI checks.

It was report­ed that instead, appointees would receive inter­im secu­ri­ty clear­ance on the first day of Trump’s sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion. But with Tuesday’s new MOU agree­ment, back­ground checks will hap­pen.