Biden team pushes Trump administration to stop blocking transition resources
The Biden-Trump standoff is complicating the president-elect’s White House preparations.
A standoff between Joe Biden and President Trump over the results of the election is complicating the president-elect’s ability to prepare for the White House.
Three days after the Associated Press and other media outlets said Mr Biden had won enough Electoral College votes to secure the presidency and declared him the winner of the 2020 election, the Trump administration has declined to make a typically routine technical designation that would grant the former vice president crucial transition resources. Mr Trump hasn’t conceded the race.
Mr Biden’s advisers are urging the General Services Administration, a little known government agency, to identify him as the winner of the election, arguing that Mr. Trump’s efforts to contest the results of the election have little chance of success. The president-elect’s team is considering legal action if the GSA doesn’t make its designation soon, Biden transition officials said.
A GSA spokeswoman said Tuesday morning that the designation had not been made. Trump administration officials have instructed federal agencies not to move forward with transition activities with Mr Biden’s team until a winner is formally identified by the GSA, according to people familiar with the matter.
Without the GSA’s designation, Mr Biden’s team is unable to view detailed classified information, send representatives in to embed with government agencies and have the State Department facilitate calls with foreign leaders.
The lack of access could also push back Mr Biden’s selection of cabinet officials because the ability to conduct background investigations for security clearances is also frozen.
Typically, in the weeks after an election the president-elect’s transition operation sends a team of people to embed in government agencies to plan how to take over. According to a Trump administration official, agencies have begun preparing briefing documents for Mr Biden but cannot hand them over until the GSA makes its determination.
Mr Biden is also unable to receive the same intelligence briefings as the president without the formalisation, according to a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As the Democratic nominee, Mr Biden was given intelligence briefings, but they were not as detailed as what the president receives.
“We believe that it is clear that President-elect Biden and Kamala Harris should be entitled to all GSA functions and all functions across government and we’re asking the GSA administrator to make a proper ascertainment,” a Biden transition official said Monday night. “And we believe that it’s been very, very clear that we are the winners in this election.” Mr Biden has sought to stay above the fray amid efforts by Mr Trump and Republicans to challenge the outcome of the election. The president-elect’s aides have emphasised that he will continue to press forward with his plans, with or without the Trump administration’s cooperation.
Mr Trump is mounting a series of legal challenges to the election process, and the president and his aides have refused to acknowledge Mr Biden’s victory. Asked on Tuesday whether the State Department is hampering a smooth transition to a Biden administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said with a smile, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Mr Pompeo added, “I’m very confident that we will do all the things that are necessary to make sure that the United States government will continue to perform its national-security function as we go forward.” Mr Trump, meanwhile, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning, “WE WILL WIN!” Mr Biden is leading Mr Trump by more than 4.8 million votes nationally, according to the AP. The former vice president is projected to win at least 290 Electoral College votes, according to the AP’s tally. At least 270 are required to win the presidency. The AP hasn’t yet called Alaska, Georgia and North Carolina. Mr Trump is leading in North Carolina and Alaska, and Mr Biden is leading in Georgia.
Though he hasn’t conceded defeat, Mr Trump has started a political-action committee that would allow him to back candidates for office and exert financial influence in Washington once his presidency ends. As of Tuesday, the Trump campaign’s joint fundraising operation was already using its email and text-message lists to direct contributions from supporters to the PAC, called Save America.
World leaders continued to reach out to Mr Biden to congratulate him on his victory. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he spoke by phone with the president-elect on Tuesday. Other foreign leaders have also phoned Mr Biden to congratulate him and discuss the path forward, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Mr Trump hasn’t made a public appearance since late last week and has no public events on his schedule on Tuesday. He is scheduled to visit Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday to mark Veterans Day. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Senate Republicans. He will then travel to Florida for vacation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The GSA, a federal agency that manages real estate and other logistics, is given the power to ascertain the presidential election because of a 1963 federal law that leaves it to the administrator to certify a winner and set the process in motion. Historically, the agency has accepted media projections of the winner as the basis for beginning the transition process.
However, the law is vague on what standard the GSA administrator should apply in making that determination — a potential barrier to any legal challenge by Mr Biden. The law says only that the administrator shall determine the “apparent” winner, with no instructions on what that should mean in the event of a dispute or a challenge.
“It’s tough because it’s such a vague word,” said Jack Beermann, a law professor at Boston University who has studied presidential transitions.
On Monday, Mr Trump’s presidential campaign filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania, where the AP said Mr Biden had enough votes to be declared the winner, asking a federal court to stop certification of Pennsylvania’s election results until mail-in ballots in Philadelphia and Allegheny counties are reviewed.
Attorney-General William Barr broke with longstanding policy on Monday when he authorised federal prosecutors to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting and vote-tabulation irregularities before the 2020 presidential election is certified, saying in a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that investigations “may be conducted if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state.” No evidence of widespread voter fraud has surfaced.
“It is deeply unfortunate that the Attorney-General Barr chose to issue a memorandum that will only fuel the ‘specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims’ he professes to guard against,” said Biden legal adviser Bob Bauer. “Those are the very kind of claims that the president and his lawyers are making unsuccessfully every day, as their lawsuits are laughed out of one court after another.” The Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, stepped down from his post Monday night, telling colleagues in an email, reviewed by the Journal, that his decision was in response to Mr Barr’s memo. He will stay on as a prosecutor at the Justice Department in a nonsupervisory role, a person familiar with the matter said.
Ahead of the election, the Biden team prepared for a potentially messy transition given the president’s mixed message on whether there would be a smooth transition of power.
Mr. Biden is making preparations to take over the presidency. On Tuesday, he will give a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, about health care. Mr Biden and Vice President-elect Harris received their first briefing Monday from the transition team’s newly unveiled COVID-19 advisory board.
The president-elect is expected to soon announce his senior White House staffers, including chief of staff. He will begin rolling out key cabinet nominees, beginning with jobs related to health and the economy, later this month, according to aides.
In past elections, the GSA has sent a letter identifying the winner within days of the AP and television networks calling the election, long before the results are made official by the Electoral College. In 2008, the letter was signed within hours. The only time in recent history the GSA didn’t quickly identify a winner was in the aftermath of the tight 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.
The Associated Press, which called the race for Mr Biden on Saturday, and other major news networks have long made election projections. The AP has conducted vote counts in every presidential election since 1848.
After the GSA makes its determination, Mr Biden’s team will also have access to millions of dollars in government resources, a bigger office space and government email addresses.
The transition team has begun taking early steps to vet potential personnel picks by organising financial disclosure information, a second transition official said. But without the GSA’s signoff, the transition can’t turn to the task of clearing possible cabinet picks and other senior officials through the FBI’s background check process — a step that can take weeks.
The Trump administration is still conducting background checks so that Biden transition staff can receive security clearances.
Wall Street Journal
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