NEW YORK -- President-elect Donald Trump has expanded his search for a secretary of state, meeting with retired Gen. David Petraeus on Monday and planning to speak with U.S. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee today.
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Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, will meet with Trump today for the second time since the election. Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani were believed to be the front-runners for the Cabinet post.
Petraeus, who also has served as CIA director, said Trump "basically walked us around the world, showed a great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities as well. Very good conversation, and we'll see where it goes from here."
Corker chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has suggested publicly that he was unlikely to be chosen as secretary of state.
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Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, opposed Trump during the presidential campaign, prompting some members of the Trump transition team to criticize his inclusion as a candidate for one of the most prestigious Cabinet posts. Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former campaign manager and now a senior adviser, has publicly attacked Romney's credentials.
Another Trump backer, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., blasted Romney on CNN's New Day on Monday as "a self-serving egomaniac who puts himself first, who has a chip on his shoulder, and thinks that he should be president of the United States."
But others in Trump's inner circle are viewed as Romney supporters, believing he would have a steady hand as the nation's top diplomat, according to people familiar with the dispute who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They said Romney's supporters include Vice President-elect Mike Pence and incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who served as Republican National Committee chairman during Romney's unsuccessful presidential bid.
Pence, who participates in the meetings with potential Cabinet picks, entered the Trump Tower lobby in New York on Monday morning, saying only: "It's going to be a busy week. Get ready. Buckle up."
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The week is expected to include the announcement of Trump's choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. A person familiar with the decision said Trump has selected Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., the chairman of the House Budget Committee. An orthopedic surgeon, Price has been a leading critic of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's health care law.
The person familiar with the decision was not authorized to discuss the nomination publicly and insisted on anonymity.
Trump adviser Newt Gingrich tweeted his approval, calling Price "the right leader to help Congress replace Obamacare."
Monday's meeting with Petraeus came as the Defense Department conducts a new investigation related to the sex scandal that led to his resignation from the CIA. A U.S. official said investigators were trying to determine who leaked personal information about Paula Broadwell, the woman who had an affair with Petraeus and to whom he gave classified information, leading to his resignation and criminal charges against him. The information concerned the status of her security clearance, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Disclosure of the Broadwell information without official permission would have been a violation of federal law.
Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to one misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information, relating to documents he had provided to Broadwell, his biographer. He was spared prison time under a plea agreement with the Justice Department. The Army in late 2012 suspended the security clearance of Broadwell, a former Army intelligence officer. Such a move is routine when a person is under investigation, particularly in the case of a possible security breach.
If Petraeus does accept a Cabinet post, he would still be on criminal probation for his first months in office. Trump said during the presidential campaign that Petraeus' violations paled compared with those of Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server when she was secretary of state.
FBI Director James Comey has drawn a distinction between the two cases, saying there was no evidence that Clinton or her aides had intended to break the law through careless handling of sensitive information. Federal prosecutors said Petraeus knew that black binders he shared with Broadwell contained classified information but that he nonetheless provided them.
Recount efforts
Nearly three weeks after Election Day, Michigan officials certified Monday that Trump won the state by 10,704 votes out of nearly 4.8 million to claim all of its 16 electoral votes.
But Jill Stein's Green Party served notice that it would petition for a Michigan recount, even as her party pushed forward with recount efforts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Stein said that "Americans deserve a voting system we can trust." As of Monday, she had raised $6.2 million to finance recounts, according to her campaign website.
"After a presidential election tarnished by the use of outdated and unreliable machines and accusations of irregularities and hacks, people of all political persuasions are asking if our election results are reliable," she said in a statement.
Stein's campaign said she would file a petition Wednesday for a Michigan recount, after which Trump would have seven days to file objections.
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel said a recount would be "a waste of time and disrespectful to all Michigan voters."
Chris Thomas, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections, said the recount would begin as early as Friday to meet a Dec. 13 deadline. Under state policy, the recount would be conducted by hand.
He said election officials have heard a lot this year about "so-called fraud ... without any foundation in fact," and that a recount settling that question could provide one "silver lining."
In Wisconsin, meanwhile, the state elections commission on Monday approved a timeline to start a recount on Thursday. Stein is pushing for a hand count of the nearly 3 million ballots cast in the state, but the commission left it up to local election officials to determine the best method. Trump won the state by about 22,000 votes.
In Pennsylvania, where Trump edged Clinton by about 71,000 votes, Stein filed a lawsuit seeking a statewide recount, but it wasn't clear whether the courts had the authority to order one.
Democratic Secretary of State Pedro Cortes said there was no evidence of voting irregularities or cyberattacks on Pennsylvania's voting machines, 96 percent of which record votes electronically and leave no paper trail.
Should the results for Trump hold in all three states, as is expected, the president-elect would have 306 electoral votes to 232 for Clinton. It takes 270 to be elected president.
The electoral vote total is unlikely to change, even after a Republican member of the Electoral College said he's resigning rather than cast one of Texas' 38 electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Art Sisneros, who has said Trump "is not biblically qualified for office," wrote in a weekend blog post that "the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an elector." Electors will meet in Austin and in state capitals nationwide next month to vote for president, and Texas electors will also vote then on Sisneros' replacement.
Clinton still holds a lead of more than 2 million in the national popular vote. Jason Miller, Trump's spokesman, sought Monday to back up the president-elect's Sunday claim on Twitter that he would have also won the popular vote if it hadn't been for "millions of people who voted illegally."
Miller said illegal voting was "an issue of concern," citing a 2014 news report and a study on voting irregularities conducted before the 2016 election.
On Monday night, Trump re-tweeted a series of messages from his supporters who were critical of a CNN reporter who called Trump's accusations of illegal voting "blatant and baseless."
He then tweeted that CNN "is so embarrassed by their total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don't know what to do."
Trump also vowed on Twitter to "terminate" Obama's efforts to restore full diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S. unless Cuba's communist leaders pursue unspecified changes in their approach.
"If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal," Trump tweeted.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday took issue with that.
Summarily reversing Obama's policy, Earnest said, "is not just as simple as one tweet might make it seem."
Information for this article was contributed by Philip Rucker, John Wagner, David Nakamura, Jerry Markon and Elise Viebeck of The Washington Post; by Nancy Benac, Julie Bykowicz, David Eggert, Scott Bauer, Mark Levy, Ted Bridis, Julie Pace, Catherine Lucey, Jon Lemire and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Kevin Cirilli, Tony Capaccio, Justin Sink, Devin Banerjee and Ben Holland of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 11/29/2016