https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/15/trump-defense-pick-pentagon-esper-senate-vote/
U.S. President Donald Trump’s presumptive choice to be the Defense Department’s top policy official is already serving inside the Pentagon as a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, four sources familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy, a move that could raise eyebrows in Congress ahead of what’s expected to be a difficult confirmation process.
Anthony Tata, a Fox News commentator and Trump loyalist
Trump has also stated his preference for having acting officials in top roles. __“I like ‘acting’ because I can move so quickly,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation in 2019. “It gives me more flexibility.”–
But Democratic lawmakers have grown concerned with Trump’s practice of keeping so many acting appointees in place for so long. Congressional aides say they are also uncomfortable with the administration’s pattern of installing presumptive nominees for senior appointments in the agencies in stopgap roles before they are put before the Senate for confirmation hearings. They say by doing so, the Trump administration is maneuvering around Congress’s constitutionally required confirmation process.
“The administration has played loose with the vacancies act and acting positions,” said one Democratic congressional aide.
“It is considered very arrogant,” a former senior Trump administration official told Foreign Policy. “And it will not go over well even if [Tata] was a good nominee with the Senate.”
During the Obama administration, senior Pentagon personnel official Brad Carson got a harsh hearing on Capitol Hill and eventually resigned after pushing ahead with major changes to the military personnel system while serving as acting undersecretary for defense for personnel and readiness, which some senators saw as presuming confirmation for the job to which he was nominated.