Senate confirms Army veteran Esper as secretary of defense
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Mark Esper as defense secretary, ending a monthslong vacancy created when Jim Mattis resigned last year over policy disagreements with President Donald Trump.
The 90-8 vote reflected broad bipartisan support for Esper — who has spent most of his career in the military and in government — at a time when the country is confronting disparate national security threats.
He was officially sworn in at the end of the day, ending the longest period the Pentagon has gone without a confirmed leader.
Many see Esper’s confirmation as an important step toward restoring authority at a Pentagon that is increasingly at odds with Trump’s inner circle of White House advisers.
At his confirmation hearing July 16, Esper promised that one of his first priorities would be to fix the problem of leadership vacancies.
Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, said he believes that in the months since Mattis left, the Pentagon’s sway within the administration has weakened.
“This seems to be the primary challenge that Esper confronts: regaining the power to set the Defense Department agenda and defend it by doing what is best for the nation and the world, not what advances the president’s political agenda,” Tobias said.
Esper, 55, who has been serving as Army secretary since late 2017, previously worked on Capitol Hill as a senior Republican staffer, in top positions at the Pentagon and at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The only significant challenge to his bid to become Pentagon chief arose from his stint as a lobbyist for Raytheon, a major defense contractor, and his resistance to extending a two-year commitment he made as Army secretary to recuse himself from decisions involving the company.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democratic presidential hopeful, grilled Esper about his decision during his confirmation hearing, arguing that if he would not commit to better distance himself from Raytheon, “you should not be confirmed as secretary of defense.”
Esper and many Republicans charged that Warren was unfairly pillorying him as potentially corrupt solely because of his corporate credentials.