Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is the leading contender for Donald Trump's secretary of defense, sources close to the transition say — a choice that would reward the president-elect’s most outspoken congressional loyalist but offer few olive branches to a Trump-wary Republican national security establishment.

The two men haven’t seen eye to eye on everything: Sessions is a budget hawk who favors caps on defense spending, while Trump has called for an arms and troops buildup that could cost $55 billion or more per year. But sources say the three-term Alabama Republican senator has still emerged as the top candidate for Pentagon leader, perhaps the most important post in the upcoming Trump Cabinet.


Sessions hasn’t said publicly whether he wants the job, but sources say they expect him to have his pick of Cabinet posts — which also could include attorney general or Homeland Security secretary — and that he's leaning toward running the Defense Department.

Establishment Republican defense officials may still try to push back against a Sessions nomination as Pentagon chief, sources close to the transition say. The main alternative is Stephen Hadley, one of George W. Bush's former national security advisers, who unlike many other Bush alums shrewdly refrained from criticizing Trump during the campaign. Other possibilities include Bill Clinton's hawkish CIA director, Jim Woolsey, who endorsed Trump in September, as well as former Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri and outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

Some Republican national security figures were quick to express misgivings about Sessions, after days of media speculation that Trump would pick Hadley in an attempt to build relations with mainstream defense Republicans.

“Sessions can’t attract anybody, especially never-Trumpers, to come off the fence,” said one Republican defense official, who like several others requested anonymity to offer their candid assessment of Trump’s team. “He’s going to need at least a fraction of them.”

Said another GOP defense official: “Everyone I am talking to is saying they will consider [joining the administration] but only if it's a serious SecDef. … We need to work for someone we trust and would be proud of.”

Sessions said in a brief interview at the Capitol on Monday that he would be “pleased to consider” a Cabinet post. But when asked about any particular positions, Sessions demurred: "I'm just not talking about that."

Later Monday evening, Sessions was spotted at Trump Tower in New York. "I'm looking forward to going upstairs and chatting with folks and sharing some information. It's an exciting time," Sessions said, according to the pool report.

The Trump transition office did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump's ultimate choice "has implications for who would take the second, third levels of jobs," said Richard Fontaine, a former aide to Sen. John McCain and president of the Center for a new American Security. He said that Hadley, unlike Sessions, "has a whole pantheon of people who worked for him on the National Security Council staff and previously at the Pentagon.”

Many consider the Defense secretary post the most crucial job Trump will fill as he picks his Cabinet, and not just because it will affect who else decides to join his national security brain trust. The Pentagon is still running a war in Afghanistan and stepping up its military campaign against ISIL. The U.S. military is also confronting a far more belligerent Russia and a Chinese military buildup.

The Defense secretary is the only person aside from the president with the legal authority to order the military into action, and is the official who must confirm any decision by the commander-in-chief to launch nuclear weapons.

"This choice is crucial," said Jim Jeffrey, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board who served as deputy national security adviser under Bush. "The secretary of defense is in the chain of command, which the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not."

"You have to have somebody who knows the military, who knows hardware, and could make good judgments," added Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Iraq and Turkey. "And in terms of foreign policy, frankly a lot of the substance is hard power. The secretary of defense has a huge say in how we organize ourselves and in strengthening allies."

Sessions chairs the subcommittee on the Armed Services Committee overseeing nuclear weapons policy — experience that would come in handy as the Defense chief. He's also much closer to Trump than any of the other options, and the president-elect may be wary about inserting someone into the key Cabinet post whom he’s not comfortable with.

Last week, Trump named Sessions a vice-chair of his transition’s executive committee. Sessions' chief of staff, Rick Dearborn, joined the transition team as executive director, while former Sessions aide Stephen Miller served on Trump's campaign and is now national policy director for the transition.

Sessions, a former prosecutor, is best known in the Senate for his work on the Judiciary Committee and his tough stance on illegal immigration — a key Trump campaign plank. He’s also a budget hawk more than a defense hawk, and has praised spending limits that that Trump wants to bust through to finance a major military buildup.

Sessions "is opposed to the president elect’s own plan for defense,” said the first GOP official. “He’s a Judiciary guy, that’s where his heart is. That’s his baby, not defense. If he goes to Defense, it’s a disaster.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions hasn’t said publicly whether he wants the job, but sources say they expect him to have his pick of Cabinet posts. | Getty

The debate between defense hawks and budget hawks has been a major dividing line in the Republican Party in recent years, and Trump has fallen solidly on the defense-hawk side. He has called for adding more than 50,000 new soldiers to the Army and 20,000 more Marines, boosting the Navy to 350 ships up from about 280, and adding more fighter jets to the Air Force’s arsenal.

Defense budget analysts have predicted his plans would conservatively add $55 billion or more annually to the Pentagon's budget. While Trump has vowed to find offsets through cutting waste — a notion that Sessions would support — the analysts say that’s an unlikely if not impossible prospect at such a high price tag.

In the lead-up to the election, Sessions said in an interview with Defense News that he would — reluctantly — support an increase in defense spending to put Trump’s plans in place.

“Well it would be a need for a spending increase, there is just no doubt about it. And it is painful for me as a budget person to acknowledge that we can’t stay at a sequester-like level,” Sessions said. He added that the defense increase would not come with an equal increase for domestic spending, as the Obama White House has demanded.

Hadley made his own evident calculations during the campaign, refusing to join numerous other former Bush national security officials who criticized Trump or even endorsed Clinton. Hadley now heads the U.S. Institute of Peace and run a consulting firm with former Bush Cabinet officials Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates.

"I don't think he was having it both ways," said Peter Feaver, another National Security Council official in the Bush administration who is close to Hadley. "It was a principled decision, and in hindsight it was very wise."

Feaver was among multiple GOP national security officials who publicly opposed Trump. "I signed those letters. It is like swallowing a position pill," Feaver said. "It is like splashing poison pill juice on your face. You take yourself out of being able to help the administration if they win. But if they win, you and everyone else in America want them to have the best team possible."

Asked at a POLITICO Playbook breakfast in August whom he was endorsing, Hadley declined to take a position one way or another. Though he said endorsing Clinton was a “legitimate approach” for national security Republicans, he said it also has drawbacks.

"The problem with that approach is that Republicans will then say, 'Well, you know, you really weren't a Republican anyway' and shelve them,” he said. “And you then deal yourself out of the debate within the Republican Party about what should the Republican Party stand for."

Trump’s decision Sunday to insert Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff could be a boost to Hadley, according to one source close to the transition team. “I think Priebus increases Hadley’s chances a great deal,” the source said.

Still, Hadley and Trump would have some awkwardness when it comes to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Trump has repeatedly called a disaster but which Hadley played a key role in while in the White House. In a 2013 op-ed, Hadley wrote that “ultimately, the United States achieved its national security objectives” in the Iraq War — an assertion that’s at odds with Trump’s assessment.

Hadley, who declined to comment for this story, is also highly regarded by members of both parties. "If the country is deeply divided, you want someone who is respected on both sides of that divide," Feaver said.

Another candidate who fits that category is Talent, who also did not criticize Trump. Talent is arguably the option closest to the Republican defense establishment, and was a leading contender for the secretary's job for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

But that could also work against him. The week before the election, Talent penned an op-ed explaining why he was voting for Trump. It was hardly a ringing endorsement. “I have a conviction that it’s the right thing to do — not an easy thing, but the right thing,” he wrote.

But he did praise Trump’s defense plans. “Trump has announced a plan for rebuilding America’s armed forces that on its face, sounds excellent,” Talent wrote. “There is good reason to believe he will carry it out.”

Since leaving government, Talent has been active in the policy ranks. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and served on the 2014 National Defense Panel, a bipartisan advisory group that Trump has cited that called for increased defense spending, as well as a 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review that examined the Pentagon’s overall strategy.

Also in the mix is Woolsey, who endorsed Trump and advised the campaign.

Woolsey is more of a wild card, as he’s been out of government since serving as Clinton’s CIA director. He is close to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a major Trump advocate.

An adviser to McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, Woolsey joined the Trump campaign as a national security adviser in September. He said that was because he favored Trump’s proposal to lift the caps on defense spending.

Woolsey did not respond to calls seeking comment, although he wrote an op-ed Friday in the South China Morning Post headlined: “Under Donald Trump, the U.S. will accept China’s rise — as long as it doesn’t challenge the status quo.” That article was not in coordination with the campaign, a source said.

Other dark horses are possible, too, especially after last week's transition shake-up could bring a fresh set of eyes to the potential candidates. Ayotte's name has come up for example, although she’s an unlikely selection given that she pulled her endorsement of Trump late in the campaign.

Another possibility, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, is probably more in line for national security adviser or a top intelligence post. He would require Congress to approve his service as Defense secretary since federal law requires military officers to wait seven years before becoming the Pentagon's civilian leader.

Bryan Bender contributed to this report.