A Senate committee on Thursday will finally begin consideration of another top Pentagon nomination from President Trump, two months after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis became the first and only Senate-confirmed leader there.
Air Force secretary nominee Heather Wilson could add crucial administration presence to the big building across the river from D.C., since Mattis has been left with a skeleton crew and Obama administration holdovers. But the former New Mexico congresswoman will likely first face questioning from the Senate Armed Services Committee about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments she accepted from nuclear weapons labs after leaving Congress.
In 2013, the inspector general for the Department of Energy found that four of its contractor-run nuclear labs made $450,000 worth of payments to a company owned by Wilson between 2009 and 2011.
Wilson was a Republican representing New Mexico before leaving the House in 2009 after a decade. The nature and details of the work provided by Heather Wilson and Company to the laboratories were unclear, the IG found.
"We discovered that the contractors made payments to [the company] based on invoices that lacked the detail necessary to support that the agreed-to services had been provided," according to the published report.
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01.16.2025