“The Clinton camp is nothing if not organized,” said one source of the Hillary Clinton operation. | Getty Clinton transition team taps lawyers to help vet nominees

Hillary Clinton's presidential transition team is quietly moving to a more intense phase of its efforts to fill top jobs in the next administration.

The secretive transition operation is reaching out to experienced lawyers to help screen candidates and is already digging into the histories of potential high-level political appointees, according to four sources familiar with the transition team’s work.


“They’ve started looking at people,” said one source. “The Clinton camp is nothing if not organized.”

As part of the initial, pre-Election Day vetting process, the Clinton transition team must compile deep-dive dossiers on any potential Cabinet secretaries, powerful appointments and top White House staff. These binders consist of information culled from public records including bankruptcy, criminal and civil records, past published work, social media posts, business associations and public statements.

“A lot of it is Wikipedia-level stuff," a person briefed by one of the lawyers told POLITICO. "It's so old school." The binders can sometimes run into the hundreds of pages.

A Nov. 2, 2008, email released by WikiLeaks shows how far this stage of the vetting can go: For just one potential appointee — James Steinberg, then the dean of a public affairs school at the University of Texas — five D.C. lawyers compiled a seven-page document outlining his views and writings over the previous 20 years, his record on a number of national security and military issues, and his financial statements, past affiliations, health and marriage and potential controversies and liabilities. Steinberg later became Clinton's No. 2 at the State Department.

Clinton's team is also working on a crucial part of the effort: recruiting outside lawyers, like the ones listed in the Steinberg memo, who are experienced in vetting. The team is working on bringing in a handful of lawyers for both paid and volunteer work.

"It's finally starting to happen here. After operating with a skeleton crew, they’re starting to reach out to people to do vetting," the person said.

A second person who has spoken to members of the transition team stressed that the team is extremely cautious about leaks. Therefore, it is expected to limit face-to-face meetings with potential nominees until after the election. "They're trying to balance being ready and not putting the cart before the horse," the person said.

Insiders expect Jim Hamilton of the firm Morgan Lewis to play a key role in the vetting efforts. In the past, Hamilton served as the Clinton-Gore transition counsel for nominations; as the principal Clinton White House vetter for Supreme Court nominations; and as a vice presidential vetter for the Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama presidential campaigns. He’s part of the Clinton’s trusted inner circle, and one D.C. lawyer called him the “dean of vetting.”

Hamilton declined to comment when reached at his office, and the Clinton campaign would not discuss details of its transition vetting process.

"We are consumed with the sole task of garnering 270 electoral votes in order to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president," said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. "Decisions on personnel in a potential Clinton administration are not being made until after the election."

The ramping up of the vetting process comes as national polls show Clinton leading Donald Trump by a margin close to 6 percentage points. Clinton's aides have sought to downplay the transition planning to blunt accusations that she is overly confident in a victory, but the relatively small team is expanding and reaching out to top Democrats for advice.

With the election only 12 days away, the transition team must begin charting out the make-up of a potential White House that takes into account Clinton’s vow to make her Cabinet more inclusive. She has promised to nominate women for half of her Cabinet positions and to ensure that her staff reflects the diversity of the country.

"They have binders full of women," one person close to the transition team said, making a reference to Mitt Romney's much mocked 2012 comment about the many women who applied to work for him when he was governor of Massachusetts.