Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary, Pete Hegseth, will be asked to confirm that Biden's Pentagon secretary, Lloyd Austin, will not be able to confirm his confirmation hearing. I tried to give them rules that were different from the ones I had set.
Mr. Reid asked the committee chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), if committee members could ask Mr. Hegseth a second question.
Wicker denied the request, saying, “I think we'll have plenty of time for questioning,” adding, “We're following the exact same precedent in everything we've done with Director Austin.”
Mr. Reed also called for Mr. Hegseth's FBI background check report to be shared with all members of the committee, despite previous precedent requiring the report to be sent only to the committee chair and top officials.
Wicker again denied the request, saying, “What I'm going to do is follow the very precedent of the last two hearings for the Secretary of Defense.” [and] It was for the Chair and Ranking Members to view the report. That's my intention. ”
On Monday, Punchbowl News reported that the results of the FBI investigation into Mr. Hegseth, which is customary for leading presidential candidates, were “unremarkable.”
The results dashed Democrats' hopes that the results were flawed and could be used as evidence that their nomination was flawed.
Mr. Reed claimed that the FBI's checks were “inadequate.”
Republican strategist Andrew Slavian responded to Reid's complaint:
“Let me translate what Jack Reed meant when he claimed that the FBI report on @PeteHegseth was “insufficient.” This is the code: We're pissed that we didn't find anything bad inside. ”
Follow Christina Wong's “X” on Breitbart News. society of truth,or facebook.
