RFK Jr.’s Hopes of Having Daughter-in-Law at CIA Hit Roadblock
“Amaryllis isn’t going to make it.”
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.’S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW faces long odds in winning a top job at the Central Intelligence Agency amid mounting criticism from members of Donald Trump’s transition team and Senate Republicans.
In recent weeks, Kennedy personally asked Trump to appoint Amaryllis Fox, a former CIA officer, to be the agency’s deputy director.
Though an unconventional pick, the president-elect was favorably inclined to name Fox to the post, primarily because he likes her, according to multiple high-level sources familiar with the discussions in the transition who spoke to The Bulwark on condition of anonymity for this account.
But so far no decision has been made by Trump, and others on the transition team have grown annoyed by the process.
Members of Trump’s staff have begun bristling at unnamed Kennedy allies who they believe have taken their advocacy for Fox too far. There is particular annoyance at how what they label as “Bobby World” started a whispering campaign privately trashing Trump’s pick for the top CIA job, former director of the agency, John Ratcliffe. Among the accusations Kennedy allies leveled within the transition (but not in the press): Ratcliffe is a “Deep State” operative who would not reform the CIA without Fox being in the CIA henhouse.
“They were knifing people to make it happen and it was not well received. It’s a slash-and-burn campaign, cutting and burning,” said a Republican briefed on the dynamics, adding that the whisper campaign was killed when team members raised concerns about it privately: “There has been a course-correction the last day where they’re going to stay away from that.”
Fox met with Ratcliffe on Wednesday and the two had a cordial discussion. While another transition source said that Ratcliffe has voiced no opposition to her candidacy two separate sources briefed on Ratcliffe’s thinking say that he is opposed to her getting the spot at CIA.
But Fox faces a different audience on Capitol Hill. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)—who is the GOP Conference chair and an extremely influential voice on intelligence issues—has expressed doubts to others about her fitness for the job, according to two people briefed on the conversations. Cotton, an Army veteran and member of the Intelligence Committee, also has a familial tie to the CIA, where his wife was once employed as a staff attorney.
Part of Cotton’s objection to Fox was due to the publication of her 2019 memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA. Fox largely sidestepped the CIA’s exhaustive, pre-publication review process when she penned the book. At the time of publication, she said she was in touch with the agency and made some changes at its direction. But she insisted on keeping passages that criticized the CIA.
In private conversations with Trump transition officials, Cotton has noted that Fox’s sidestepping of the CIA process mirrors the accusations former National Security Advisor John Bolton faced when he authored an anti-Trump book in 2020.
“It’s what Bolton did,” Cotton said, according to a source.
Fox may have further imperiled her own nomination on Thursday by issuing a lengthy post on X that many saw as a not-so-veiled shot at Cotton and other influential figures in the intelligence community.
“A Kennedy at CIA, they fret. No more weaponization of our intelligence services, they complain,” she wrote. “She opposes censorship, they whine. She doesn't believe in arming terrorists, they moan. She thinks coups and wars should be avoided, they cry. She believes in the President, they despair. A DJT loyalist at Langley, they wail. She must be stopped at all costs!”
Advisers and aides to Republican senators opposed to Fox’s nomination were “widely sending her tweet with glee because it proved her critics’ point that she was unfit for the position,” said one Senate insider.
Trump’s team isn’t that critical, however. They worked with, and grew to like, Fox when she managed Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“Amaryllis isn’t going to make it for a Senate confirmable position,” said an adviser involved with the Trump transition team’s conversations. “She’s wonderful and smart, so there is a place for her in the intelligence community under Donald Trump, but second seat at CIA is not happening.”
Should Fox not end up at the CIA, transition officials are already looking at other posts for her. One likely spot would be to serve in a senior role under Tulsi Gabbard, a Fox friend whom Trump tapped to become the director of national intelligence. Cotton on Monday signaled Senate GOP support for Gabbard as well as RFK Jr., whom Trump tapped to lead the nation’s sprawling health agency.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate, left her party and campaigned for Trump alongside Kennedy, who ran for president as a Democrat this year before leaving the party as well.
During the campaign, Trump promised Kennedy he would disclose all of the records concerning the assassination of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. Over the decades, the CIA has repeatedly covered up matters relating to the assassination and pressured both Trump and then President Joe Biden to keep records secret, in contravention of the 1992 JFK Records Act that mandated disclosure of all documents in the case by 2017.
Kennedy, who is convinced that the CIA was involved in his uncle’s assassination, has advocated for Fox to help lead the agency in part to ensure those records are disclosed.
But Trump advisers know that Kennedy’s nomination as health and human services secretary could be time-consuming and they’re hoping he focuses more on his confirmation fight ahead. He begins meeting Monday with senators on Capitol Hill.
As Kennedy integrates into the Trump transition team and focuses on his own confirmation, he has also tried to stack the incoming administration with allies. But it hasn’t always been a success. Kennedy didn’t get his preferred pick to lead the Department of Agriculture or become surgeon general, and the Trump transition team objected to him making his campaign spokeswoman, Stefanie Spear, his chief of staff at the health agency.
One Trump adviser noted that Bobby World has four factions: anti-vaccine activists, environmentalists, alternative health advocates, and family members like Fox. These groups, the adviser noted, undermine and undercut each other and anyone else they perceive as threatening to their interests.
“They all are covered in each other’s blood,” the adviser said. “So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they tried to help Amaryllis but actually hurt her.”
What a nightmare Trump II will probably become. Incompetence sanctified and amplified by legions of imbecilic Republican diadochi. Our Russian enemies must be observing these apparatchik dust-ups with glee. Trump’s MAGA stalwarts remind me of the old quip about the inmates taking over an asylum.
There is actually no Deep State besides MAGA.
Whatever else it is, MAGA is anti-expertise, anti-scientific and fact-free. I now predict many Trump political opponents will be tried and convicted of non-crimes on non-existent evidence. Their true crime will be not slavishly supporting Pied Piper and Führer Trump.
And the cannibalism has already begun before any of the bodies are even cold! America voted for chaos, and they’re going to get it: good and hard! Do anyone think for a moment that any of our adversaries have such unqualified, mitigated disasters, in similar roles in those nations? Hell no! Our counterparts are serious and high intelligence and trained individuals, who will eat these imbeciles for breakfast!
That said, every bone in my body tells me Gabbard, Kennedy, and Trump’s team are going to do everything possible to discredit the CIA. They’ll declassify documents that could tie several former CIA operatives to the Kennedy assassination, just to keep the Qanon bubble alive and well, while undermining our entire National Security Apparatus in the process.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of evidence of coverups from Iran/Contra, to Iraq, but these are mostly political decisions. The intelligence agencies are just the scalpel, not the decision makers. However, this could have rippling effect on our nations security for decades to come. Iran, China, Russia and N.Korea are salivating just at the thought!