Trump sticks to hard-right positions with key appointments

US president-elect Donald Trump has continued to build his new administration with the appointment of three prominent supporters to key roles.

Mr Trump named retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn as his national security adviser, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general and Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo as director of the CIA. Mr Sessions and Mr Pompeo both face confirmation hearings in front of US Senate committees.

The appointments of Mr Flynn and Mr Sessions show Mr Trump’s desire to reward loyalty to early and long-time supporters and his intention to stick to his hard-right campaign promises that have divided the country.

Mr Sessions became the first sitting US senator to endorse the businessman when he donned a “Make American Great Again” hat at a rally in his home state in February and threw his support behind Mr Trump’s candidacy. At the time, he was already advising the New York property developer on his immigration policy.

The 69-year-old has represented his southern state since 1996 and is known for his anti-immigration stance as chairman of the US Senate’s subcommittee on immigration, a position that helped legitimise Mr Trump’s plan to build a border wall along the Mexican border, a central pillar of his presidential bid.

The senator also served on the Senate judiciary committee, which oversees the justice department and the FBI, where he has become known for his tough-on-crime positions. This has led to fears that he might reverse civil rights and criminal justice reforms introduced by Mr Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder.

Rejected as judge

Teeing up a likely fraught confirmation hearing before Senate Democrats, Mr Sessions, a former

United States

prosecutor in Alabama, was rejected as a federal judge at the age of 39 on a nomination by President

Ronald Reagan

after lawyers testified before

Congress

that he had made racially charged comments.

Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Mr Sessions, testified in 1986 that the Alabama prosecutor had called him "boy" on multiple occasions and joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan were "okay until he learned that they smoked marijuana". He also claimed that Mr Sesssions called the civil rights groups NAACP and ACLU "un-American". Mr Sessions denied the claims.

Mr Flynn (57) has been a vocal supporter of Mr Trump’s most controversial proposals, backing his temporary ban on Muslim immigrants, his plans to reintroduce waterboarding, which simulates drowning, as a method of torture and his defence of killing the families of terror suspects.

A 35-year military veteran, the former three-star general served in Afghanistan and Iraq and the respected military officer rose to become head of the Defence Intelligence Agency. He was forced out in 2014 after just two years in the role over his abrasive management style and questionable factual assertions.

During the campaign Mr Flynn became closely aligned with Mr Trump's positions, attacking Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton for refusing to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" in the fight against Islamic State. He led chants of "lock her up" against Mrs Clinton at the Republican national convention in July.

CIA appointment

Mr Pompeo (52), a third-term Republican congressman and a graduate of both

West Point

and

Harvard Law School

, will bring his experience from serving on US House of Representative energy, commerce and intelligence committees to the role of CIA director.

He criticised a Republican-led committee's report into Mrs Clinton and the 2012 attack on the US outpost in Benghazi, Libya for not being hard enough on the former US secretary of state.

He is, like Mr Trump, opposed to the Iran nuclear deal and has called for the restoration of surveillance powers that were curbed following the leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.