Vance takes on a more visible transition role, working to boost Trump's most contentious picks

WASHINGTON (AP) — After several weeks working mostly behind closed doors, Vice President-elect JD Vance returned to Capitol Hill this week in a new, more visible role: Helping Donald Trump try to get his most contentious Cabinet picks to confirmation in the Senate, where Vance has served for the last two years.

Vance arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday with former Rep. Matt Gaetz and spent the morning sitting in on meetings between Trump’s choice for attorney general and key Republicans, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort was for naught: Gaetz announced a day later that he was withdrawing his name amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations and the reality that he was unlikely to be confirmed.

Thursday morning Vance was back, this time accompanying Pete Hegseth, the “Fox & Friends Weekend” host whom Trump has tapped to be the next secretary of defense. Hegseth also has faced allegations of sexual assault that he denies.

Vance is expected to accompany other nominees for meetings in coming weeks as he tries to leverage the two years he has spent in the Senate to help push through Trump's picks.

Vance is taking on an atypical role as Senate guide for Trump nominees

The role of introducing nominees around Capitol Hill is an unusual one for a vice president-elect. Usually the job goes to a former senator who has close relationships on the Hill, or a more junior aide.

But this time the role fits Vance, said Marc Short, who served as Trump’s first director of legislative affairs as well as chief of staff to Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who spent more than a decade in Congress and led the former president’s transition ahead of his first term.

”JD probably has a lot of current allies in the Senate and so it makes sense to have him utilized in that capacity,” Short said.

Unlike the first Trump transition, which played out before cameras at Trump Tower in New York and at the president-elect's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, this one has largely happened behind closed doors in Palm Beach, Florida.

There, a small group of officials and aides meet daily at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort to run through possible contenders and interview job candidates. The group includes Elon Musk, the billionaire who has spent so much time at the club that Trump has joked he can’t get rid of him.

Vance has been a constant presence, even as he’s kept a lower profile. The Ohio senator has spent much of the last two weeks in Palm Beach, according to people familiar with his plans, playing an active role in the transition, on which he serves as honorary chair.

Mar-a-Lago scene is a far cry from Vance's hardscrabble upbringing

Vance has been staying at a cottage on the property of the gilded club, where rooms are adorned with cherubs, oriental rugs and intricate golden inlays. It's a world away from the famously hardscrabble upbringing that Vance documented in the memoir that made him famous, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

His young children have also joined him at Mar-a-Lago, at times. Vance was photographed in shorts and a polo shirt playing with his kids on the seawall of the property with a large palm frond, a U.S. Secret Service robotic security dog in the distance.

On the rare days when he is not in Palm Beach, Vance has been joining the sessions remotely via Zoom.

Though he has taken a break from TV interviews after months of constant appearances, Vance has been active in the meetings, which began immediately after the election and include interviews and as well as presentations on candidates’ pluses and minuses.

Among those interviewed: Contenders to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray, as Vance wrote in a since-deleted social media post.

Defending himself from criticism that he’d missed a Senate vote in which one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees was confirmed, Vance wrote that he was meeting at the time "with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director.”

“I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” Vance added on X. “But that’s just me.”

Vance is making his voice heard as Trump stocks his Cabinet

While Vance did not come in to the transition with a list of people he wanted to see in specific roles, he and his friend, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is also a member of the transition team, were eager to see former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. find roles in the administration.

Trump ended up selecting Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence, a powerful position that sits atop the nation’s spy agencies and acts as the president’s top intelligence adviser. And he chose Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a massive agency that oversees everything from drug and food safety to Medicare and Medicaid.

Vance was also a big booster of Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who will serve as Trump's “border czar.”

In another sign of Vance's influence, James Braid, a top aide to the senator, is expected to serve as Trump’s legislative affairs director.

Allies say it’s too early to discuss what portfolio Vance might take on in the White House. While he gravitates to issues like trade, immigration and tech policy, Vance sees his role as doing whatever Trump needs.

Vance was spotted days after the election giving his son’s Boy Scout troop a tour of the Capitol and was there the day of leadership elections. He returned in earnest this week, first with Gaetz — arguably Trump’s most divisive pick — and then Hegseth, who has was been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, according to an investigative report made public this week. Hegseth told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing.

Vance hosted Hegseth in his Senate office as GOP senators, including those who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, filtered in to meet with the nominee for defense secretary.

While a president’s nominees usually visit individual senators’ offices, meeting them on their own turf, the freshman senator — who is accompanied everywhere by a large Secret Service detail that makes moving around more unwieldy — instead brought Gaetz to a room in the Capitol on Wednesday and Hegseth to his office on Thursday. Senators came to them.

Vance made it to votes Wednesday and Thursday, but missed others on Thursday afternoon.

Vance will draw on his Senate background going forward

Vance is expected to continue to leverage his relationships in the Senate after Trump takes office. But many Republicans there have longer relationships with Trump himself.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, said that Trump was often the first person to call him back when he was trying to reach high-level White House officials during Trump's first term.

“He has the most active Rolodex of just about anybody I’ve ever known,” Cramer said, adding that Vance would make a good addition.

“They’ll divide names up by who has the most persuasion here,” Cramer said, but added, “Whoever his liaison is will not work as hard at it as he will.”

Cramer was complimentary of the Ohio senator, saying he was “pleasant” and ” interesting” to be around.

″He doesn’t have the long relationships," he said. "But we all like people that have done what we’ve done. I mean, that’s sort of a natural kinship, just probably not as personally tied.”

Under the Constitution, Vance will also have a role presiding over the Senate and breaking tie votes. But he's not likely to be needed for that as often as was Kamala Harris, who broke a record number of ties for Democrats as vice president, since Republicans will have a bigger cushion in the chamber next year.

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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.