NEW YORK -- Facing a week of high-profile tests for his administration lineup, President-elect Donald Trump predicted Monday that all of his Cabinet picks would win Senate confirmation even as Democrats claimed that Trump's team was ignoring standard vetting protocol.
"I think they'll all pass," Trump said of his would-be Cabinet, describing them as "all at the highest level" in between private meetings in his Manhattan tower.
Trump's confidence comes as lawmakers in both parties eagerly await the submission of background material from Cabinet picks, including billionaires whose extensive personal financial dealings have never faced public scrutiny. Senate Democrats urged GOP leaders to slow their aggressive hearing schedule, which includes Trump's picks for the nation's top diplomat, lead law enforcement officer and head of homeland security.
"Bear in mind President-elect Trump's nominees pose particularly difficult ethics and conflict-of-interest challenges," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said. "They come from enormous wealth, many have vast holdings and stocks, and very few have experience in government."
[TRUMP: Timeline of president-elect’s career + list of appointments so far]
One wealthy Trump pick official who won't require Senate confirmation: son-in-law Jared Kushner, who transition officials confirmed Monday would serve as a senior adviser in the new administration.
While not subject to Senate approval, White House staff members must publicly disclose personal financial information.
Addressing the Cabinet selections, Trump's incoming press secretary Sean Spicer insisted Monday, "Everyone who has a hearing this week has their paperwork in."
It's unclear, however, whether each had submitted the extensive list of requirements that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., requested of President Barack Obama's nominees eight years ago. Those include an FBI background check, detailed questionnaires and financial disclosure statements that include tax returns, according to a 2009 letter from McConnell that Schumer read Monday on the Senate floor.
[INTERACTIVE: Read the intelligence report on Russian hacking in U.S. election]
"Everybody'll be properly vetted as they have been in the past," McConnell told reporters Monday after meeting privately with the president-elect in Trump Tower.
On Friday, however, Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub said in a letter to congressional leaders that his office "has not received even initial draft financial disclosure reports for some of the nominees scheduled for hearings."
Among the committees that haven't yet received the forms was the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has scheduled a hearing this week for Betsy DeVos, Trump's pick to lead the Education Department. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said it had also not received the forms for Trump's pick for commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, though a spokesman said they're expected soon.
Late Monday, DeVos' hearing was postponed from Wednesday to Jan. 17. Health and education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a joint statement that the change in timing came "at the request of the Senate leadership to accommodate the Senate schedule."
An aide to Murray said the senator hopes the delay will allow DeVos to fully take part in an ethics review ahead of the confirmation hearing. "Sen. Murray is hopeful that this additional time will allow Ms. DeVos to complete the required ethics paperwork in time for the Office of Government Ethics to submit it to the HELP Committee before her hearing, just as every single one of President Obama's nominees did and as Leader McConnell demanded eight years ago," the aide said.
Committee aides said they had received ethics forms for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump's pick for attorney general; Rex Tillerson, Trump's choice for secretary of state; former Marine Gen. John Kelly, his pick for homeland security secretary; James Mattis, his pick for defense secretary; Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., his choice for director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Elaine Chao, his pick for transportation secretary.
The committee handling Ben Carson's nomination for housing secretary declined to comment on the record.
Hearings are scheduled for today for Sessions and Kelly.
Senate Democrats were preparing to challenge Sessions over his hard-line stand on immigration, past record on civil rights and on whether he supports community policing.
Sessions has already drawn opposition from at least two Democrats, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Booker -- one of three black senators -- said he will testify against Sessions on Wednesday, marking a rare instance in which a senator has testified against a colleague seeking a Cabinet post. In a statement, Booker accused Sessions of having a "concerning" record on civil rights and criminal justice reform and called his decision "a call to conscience."
McConnell said he's hopeful that up to six or seven of Trump's picks, "particularly the national security team," will be "in place on Day One."
The Senate cannot vote on any Cabinet pick until after Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.
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As his Cabinet prospects prepare to disclose their personal business dealings, Trump insisted Monday that there is a "very simple, very easy" way to disentangle himself from his global business empire before he takes office.
The details, he said, would have to wait until Wednesday, when he holds his first formal news conference in nearly six months.
Mattis' disclosures
The ethics documents show that Mattis, a retired Marine general, has received millions of dollars in income since leaving the military, including through lucrative speaking engagements with companies such as Goldman Sachs and Northrop Grumman, and paid positions with Theranos, Stanford University and General Dynamics.
Mattis, who retired as chief of U.S. Central Command in 2013, said in a memo to the Pentagon dated Jan. 5 that he would not participate "personally and substantially" in any matters in which he knew he had a financial interest without seeking a legal waiver.
Mattis' most significant forms of income since retiring, according to the documents, include a salary of $419,359 as a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and fees of $242,000 as a member of the board of directors at the defense contractor General Dynamics.
Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, was also cleared for confirmation Monday. No date has been set for Pruitt's Senate confirmation hearing.
Cyberattacks
Also on Monday, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said Obama's response to Russia's alleged election-related hacking was "disproportionate" compared with past actions, and Trump will have a different approach once he takes office next week.
"There does seem to be a disproportionate response, a punitive one, by President Obama in the instance of the alleged Russian hacking," Conway said in an interview published Monday in USA Today. Asked if Trump would roll back any of the "steps" imposed by Obama, Conway said: "I predict that President Trump will want to make sure that our actions are proportionate to what occurred, based on what we know."
Obama last month expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and imposed sanctions on top intelligence officials and agencies over cyberattacks backed by the Kremlin and aimed at interfering with the 2016 election campaign. Trump had repeatedly questioned the findings, and he praised President Vladimir Putin for being "very smart" after the Russian leader declined to reciprocate by expelling U.S. diplomats.
In a declassified report released after briefing the president-elect last week, the intelligence community said Putin personally ordered a hacking and disinformation campaign to influence the U.S. presidential campaign and developed "a clear preference" for Trump to win.
Trump, toning down his earlier public criticism of the analysis after meeting the intelligence chiefs, said he will appoint a team that will give him a plan within 90 days of taking office "to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks."
Later on Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was adding five Russians under the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions people for human-rights abuses as well as those deemed complicit in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Among the five is a senior law enforcement official close to Putin.
The economic sanctions against the five Russians are not related to the U.S. intelligence agencies findings regarding the elections, officials said.
The most prominent individual targeted by the U.S. is Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia's main investigative agency. Bastrykin and Putin attended the same university together.
The Investigative Committee under Bastrykin investigated Russian whistleblower Magnitsky's death in prison in 2009. It determined that Magnitsky died in detention and closed the case after determining that there was no evidence of a crime.
Information for this article was contributed by Jill Colvin, Steve Peoples, Julie Pace, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor, Deb Riechmann, Eileen Sullivan, Michael Biesecker, Sean Murphy and Vladimir Isachenkov of The Associated Press; by Nick Wadhams of Bloomberg News; and by Michael Kranish, Abby Phillip, Dan Lamothe, Emma Brown and Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post.
A Section on 01/10/2017