Trump offers national security role to retired general Flynn

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has offered the post of national security adviser to Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, potentially elevating a retired intelligence officer who believes Islamist militancy poses an existential threat on a global scale to one of the most powerful roles in shaping military and foreign policy, according to a top official on Trump's transition team.

It was not clear whether Flynn, 57, a registered Democrat who was fired as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 by President Barack Obama, had accepted the position. Flynn advised Trump throughout his campaign, and as national security adviser, he would be a critical gatekeeper to the president, overseeing a staff of roughly 400 people.

In the role, he would often have the last word on how Trump should handle crises that could range from a showdown with China over the South China Sea to an international health crisis like the Ebola epidemic.

Given Trump's lack of experience on national security matters, Flynn could serve a role of even greater importance than his predecessors. At the same time, his appointment is a signal that the Trump administration is unlikely to be dominated by members of the Republican national security elite that shaped the policies of President George W. Bush, almost all of whom made clear that they believed Trump was unfit to lead the country.

Once counted among the most respected military officers of his generation, Flynn was an ardent supporter of Trump, and he alienated many former colleagues with his denunciations of the wars in Iraq and elsewhere, efforts that he had helped lead during his time in the military.

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Flynn would bring to the White House a belief that the problem in the Middle East for the United States is ultimately with the Islamic faith itself. He has criticized the religion as being nothing more than a "political ideology," has made a point of using the phrase "radical Islamist terrorism" as often as possible, and once posted a video on his Twitter account that included the phrase "Fear of Muslims is rational." He has also claimed that Islamic law, known as Shariah, is spreading in the United States, without providing evidence.

"We're in a world war, but very few Americans recognize it," he wrote in "The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies," a book he wrote this year with Michael Ledeen, a national security expert. "Fewer still have any idea how to win it."

In another potential addition to the administration, Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, has spoken to a lawyer about the possibility of holding a formal role, a move that could run afoul of a federal anti-nepotism law and would risk legal challenges and a political backlash.

Kushner, 35, the husband of Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka, and an influential adviser to his father-in-law during the presidential campaign, had been planning to return to his private businesses after Election Day. But on the morning after Trump won, Kushner began discussing taking a role in the White House, according to two people briefed on the conversations who requested anonymity to describe Kushner's thinking.

Trump is urging his son-in-law to join him in the White House, according to one of the people briefed. The president-elect's sentiment is shared by Stephen K. Bannon, chief strategist for the White House, and Reince Priebus, who was named chief of staff. Kushner accompanied Trump to the White House on Thursday, when the president-elect held his first in-person meeting with Obama.

Kushner has already figured prominently in the tumultuous start to the transition. He was involved in the effort to oust Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — who as a federal prosecutor jailed Kushner's father more than a decade ago. Trump officials have systematically fired those Christie had selected for the effort. Transition officials have rejected claims that Kushner was involved in a payback effort, and pointed to Christie's troubles after two aides were convicted in the "Bridgegate" scandal in New Jersey.

Trump's desire to have his son-in-law at his side in the West Wing added another element of unpredictability to an unconventional handover of power, but there were signs Thursday that Trump's transition operation was edging toward normalcy after its chaotic first week.

Trump sat down with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, his first in-person session with a world leader since winning the White House. A clearer picture emerged of the figures who have Trump's ear, among them Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who is under consideration to be attorney general or secretary of state. On Capitol Hill, Vice President-elect Mike Pence told House Republicans to "buckle up" in anticipation of a packed legislative session.

Trump's aides held their first scheduled daily conference call with reporters while transition officials whose work had been stalled by shake-ups in Trump Tower began work with their Obama administration counterparts on a handover.

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The prospect that Kushner might end up in the West Wing remained a concern to some people close to the president-elect, who said he would instantly become a target for media and legal attacks if he took the unorthodox step.

Kushner has consulted with at least one lawyer and believes that by forgoing a salary and putting his investment fund, his real estate holdings and his newspaper, The New York Observer, into a blind trust, he would not be bound by federal nepotism rules, according to one of the people briefed.

Ethics lawyers in both parties said such an arrangement would violate a federal statute designed to prevent family ties from influencing the functioning of the U.S. government. Under a 1967 law enacted after John F. Kennedy installed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, no public official can hire a family member — including one related by marriage — to an agency or office over which he has authority.

A separate statute also makes it a crime, punishable by a fine and up to two years of prison time, for government employees to accept voluntary services that are not authorized by law, except in emergency situations.

The anti-nepotism law "would seem to block out Kushner flatly," said Norman L. Eisen, who served as Obama's ethics counsel during his transition and at the White House. If Trump were to attempt to skirt it by having Kushner advise him in a volunteer capacity, he added, he "would be treading upon very serious statutory and constitutional grounds."

"When push comes to shove, on the very hardest calls that confront a president, you want the president's adviser to remember that their oath or affirmation to the Constitution comes first, before family ties," Eisen said. "You need to be able to say no. You need to be able to hold the line. You need to be able to threaten to resign, and you need to be able to actually resign. You can't resign from being somebody's son-in-law."

Richard W. Painter, an ethics counsel to George W. Bush, said he remembered having to inform a senior official serving Bush that he was legally barred from granting a White House internship to his son. Painter based his decision on a reading of the anti-nepotism law by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during Jimmy Carter's administration, which barred the president from doing so for his own child.

"I told him: 'Jimmy Carter couldn't do it. If the president of the United States couldn't do it, I can't do it for your kid,'" Painter recalled. "I got cussed out."

Trump could attempt to circumvent the law, the lawyers said, by arguing that he has broad executive authority as president to choose his advisers. But that move would probably invite a legal challenge, forcing a court to decide whether the president's executive authority to choose his advisers takes precedent over a law passed by Congress that bans nepotism in the government.

The question of Kushner's role also highlights a broader challenge facing Trump and his children as he assumes the presidency — how to separate his role as leader of the country from his vast real estate and business empire and avoid conflicts of interest.

Even if Kushner placed his own holdings in a blind trust, his marriage to Trump poses an inherent conflict, according to ethics experts, because he would have access through his wife to information about Trump's businesses that the president-elect should be barred from knowing.

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Emmarie Huetteman contributed reporting.