Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) recently sent a stern message to the outgoing Biden-Harris Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin to stop trying to undermine the incoming Trump administration.
In a November 20, 2024, letter, he wrote to Austin:
I write to express my concern that Pentagon officials are seeking to undermine President Trump’s incoming administration. It appears that partisans and obstructionists inside the Department of Defense are laying groundwork to defy or circumvent President Trump’s plans. for both military and civil-service reform. These actions undermine civilian control of the military and our constitutional structure of government.
Cotton cited media reports that said Pentagon officials were holding meetings to strategize against President-elect Donald Trump’s defense agenda, “while also promulgating false claims that the incoming administration plans to arbitrarily fire uniformed leaders.”
He also noted to Austin that the day after the election, he sent a memo to the entire department commenting that the military would follow “lawful orders” from Trump, which Cotton called “a thinly veiled and baseless insinuation that President Trump will issue unlawful orders.”
Cotton said the Pentagon has also attempted to obstruct Trump’s plans for “badly needed” defense civil service reform.
He noted that Austin earlier in the year released a memo on the “Integrity and Continuity of the Defense Career Civilian Workforce” in a seeming effort to “impede efforts to remove underperforming personnel and eliminate unnecessary positions.”
He noted that outgoing Comptroller Michael McCord also “lectured the incoming administration about avoiding the ‘self-inflicted wound’ of civil service reform.” As Breitbart News reported, McCord recently pushed back against calling it a “failure” that the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row.
Cotton also said these tactics were in vain, since it could not limit Trump’s constitutional authority as commander-in-chief.
He wrote:
I have to observe that these actions and reports only prove the need for reform and fundamental change at the Department of Defense. And, of course, while inappropriate and annoying, these tactics are also useless because no action by the outgoing administration can limit the incoming president’s constitutional authority as commander-in-chief.
“Please, therefore, knock off this nonsense and get on with the business of handing over the reins to the next administration,” he concluded.
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