Trump taps Army Secretary Mark Esper to lead Pentagon

By Jacqueline Feldscher

President Donald Trump will nominate Army Secretary Mark Esper to be the next secretary of Defense, the White House said Friday night, in the administration's latest attempt to resolve months of uncertainty at the top of the Pentagon.

The news comes three days after the abrupt resignation of acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan, whose hopes of getting the job collapsed amid ethics questions, complaints about his leadership style and media scrutiny of his troubled family history.

Trump had said in early May that he intended to nominate Shanahan for the post, but he never submitted the paperwork to the Senate.

The White House also said Friday that Trump will nominate Pentagon comptroller David Norquist — the brother of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist — to be deputy Defense secretary, and Army Undersecretary Ryan McCarthy to be Army secretary.

Esper, a West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, is already set to become acting Defense secretary when Shanahan's resignation takes effect on Sunday. But federal law may force him to bow out of that post once Trump formally nominates him.

Esper has been secretary of the Army since November 2017, after spending seven years as a top lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon. He also worked on Capitol Hill as national security adviser for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and as a professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Much like Shanahan, who was a long-time Boeing executive, Esper will probably face questions from Congress about his close ties to industry — one of the key sticking points when senators previously considered Esper's nomination to be Army secretary. Esper has recused himself from matters involving Raytheon for two years, but that period will end in November.

Pat Shanahan, senior vice president of Airplane Programs for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, greets guests at a re-opening ceremony for Boeing's newly expanded 737 delivery center, Monday, Oct. 19, 2015, at Boeing Field in Seattle. The center will be the main delivery point for various configurations of the 737 single-aisle airplanes to customers and is double the size of the previous building.

One of the biggest issues could be whether he will need to sit out negotiations with Turkey over its purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system. The U.S. has been urging Russia to buy the American Patriot missile defense system instead, which is made by Raytheon, and some defense experts have said Esper could not advocate for buying a system from his former employer.

Another complication is the Vacancies Act, a 1998 law that lays out the succession rules for a Senate-confirmed position within the administration.

Under that law, Esper cannot serve as acting Defense secretary while the Senate is considering his nomination to be the permanent secretary. Under the Pentagon’s order of succession, the new acting Defense secretary would probably be Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.

Trump would have to nominate Esper before July 30, because the act says a position can have an acting official for only 210 days. That clock began running when former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned effective Jan. 1, according to a memo from Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine officer and CEO of The Punaro Group consulting firm.

As Army secretary, Esper has been a close ally to the president, including on the deployment of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. But he has differed from the president on other issues, including Trump’s ban on transgender service members. Esper testified last year alongside Gen. Mark Milley, who has been nominated to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that no readiness concerns arise from letting transgender troops serve.

Esper received a commission as an infantry officer after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy in 1986. He also served in the National Guard and Army reserves before retiring in 2007, according to his Army biography.