Flynn appears set for nat'l security adviser.
Michael Flynn has been offered the position of national security adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, a senior Trump official has said. ... As national security adviser, the former military intelligence chief Flynn would have the direct ear of a president with no national security experience. Flynn’s views on Islam and relationships with Russia make him a controversial figure. He tweeted in February that fear of Muslims is “rational” and frequently appears on the Russian state-funded news network RT. Flynn was a vocal critic of the Obama administration and broke with most national security officials by supporting Trump during the campaign. The announcement was met with concern from Human Rights Watch, who raised Flynn’s refusal to rule out the use of torture. It remains unclear if he has accepted the position but he was photographed sitting in on a meeting between Trump and Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on Thursday.
Trump attorney general pick accused of racial slur against black official in 1981
As Donald Trump faces criticism of his business interests and transition team, his nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions for US attorney general has reopened a decades-long dispute over Sessions’ views on race. Sessions, who has been a senator since 1997, was once accused of calling a black official in Alabama a “nigger”, and then gave a false explanation to the US Senate when testifying about the allegation. In 1981, Sessions was said to have used the racist term to refer to Douglas Wicks, the first black man to be elected as a county commissioner in Mobile, where Sessions was a Republican party official and a federal prosecutor. When asked about the remark five years later during Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination for a federal judgeship, Sessions denied saying the remark and said there was not a black county commissioner at that time. However, records show Wicks was elected in September 1980 – more than a year before Sessions allegedly referred to him using the racist term. Sessions’ nomination to the southern Alabama judgeship was ultimately rejected by a Republican-controlled US Senate judiciary committee.