WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has asked U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, a retired Army National Guard officer and war veteran, to be his national security adviser, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

The approval came despite concerns on Capitol Hill about Trump’s access to House members, where the final tally is still uncertain and there are concerns about any GOP members withdrawing from the chamber, as that would force a new election to fill the empty seat. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter before Trump makes an official announcement.

The move would put Waltz at the head of a litany of national security crises — from the ongoing effort to provide weapons to Ukraine and growing worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea to persistent attacks in the Middle East in side of Iran’s representatives and the push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah.

Waltz, a three-term GOP congressman from east-central Florida, was the first Green Beret elected to the US House and easily won re-election last week. He was chairman of the House Armed Services Training Subcommittee and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Waltz is an ardent Trump advocate who has supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He is seen as solicitous of China and has called for a US boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing because of its involvement in the origin of the COVID- 19 and its continued mistreatment of the Uighur Muslim minority population.

He was a sharp critic of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan and called on the US to hold accountable those responsible for the deaths of the 13 US service members at Abbey Gate and the “thousands of Americans and allies behind enemy lines. “

He also repeated Trump’s frequent complaints about the so-called “woke” military that the former president derided as soft and too focused on diversity and equity programs.

In a statement last year, Waltz said that, as head of the readiness subcommittee, “I’m ready to get to work to better equip our military and shift our focus away from awakened priorities and back to winning wars. Our national security depends on it.”

A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, Waltz was a Green Beret. He served in the active duty military for four years before transferring to the Florida Guard. While in the Guard, he served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa and was awarded four Bronze Stars, including two for valor.

He also worked in the Pentagon as a policy advisor when Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were defense chiefs.

“President-elect Trump will soon begin making decisions about who will serve in his second administration,” said Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. “These decisions will be announced when they are made.”

Richard Goldberg, who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, called Waltz an impressive choice whose experience as an elite member of the US service and experience on Capitol Hill will be of great value to Trump.

“With wildfires raging around the world right now, Waltz is well-positioned to help the president put out those fires,” said Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Waltz’s selection was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

— AP writers Jill Colvin in New York and Zeke Miller and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.

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