Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s daughter-in-law reportedly is no longer under consideration to serve as deputy director at the CIA during the second Trump administration.
President-elect Donald Trump told people close to him that he's not considering former undercover CIA operative Amaryllis Fox Kennedy for the position, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Fox Kennedy, who is married to Bobby Kennedy III, had interviewed separately with Trump's pick for CIA director, John Ratcliffe.
Trump has told some people that he wanted a national security position for Fox Kennedy and that the CIA post was not the only option, the Post reported. A position at the White House National Security Council or within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence remain possibilities.
Republican lawmakers, led by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, opposed Fox Kennedy becoming deputy director because they feared she would seek to impose major changes at the CIA, the Post reported.
Axios, which last week reported Fox Kennedy was being pushed for the CIA position by her uncle, confirmed that Cotton reached out to Trump's incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to warn against Fox Kennedy as a pick for the deputy job.
Cotton, who will chair the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee next year, is a staunch supporter of subversive espionage operations abroad.
He and Trump's secretary of state pick, Marco Rubio, are considered hardline hawks in Trump's orbit, while Vice President-elect JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for director of national intelligence, are skeptics.
The CIA deputy director does not require Senate confirmation despite the position wielding significant influence in the U.S. intelligence community.
"President-Elect Trump continues to make decisions on who will serve in his second Administration," Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, the Post reported. "Those decisions will continue to be announced when they are made."
RFK Jr., the nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, has been pushing his daughter-in-law for the CIA position because he felt she would help get to the bottom of the John F. Kennedy assassination, Axios reported previously.
While campaigning for the Democrat's presidential nomination, RFK Jr. said he would like to continue the work of his late uncle, who said he wanted to "splinter" the CIA "into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds," after the failed Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba, the Post reported.
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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