Trump’s Transition Disruption: State Dept blocking world leaders’ from reaching Biden
President-elect names longtime adviser as chief of staff
US President-elect Joe Biden was pressing ahead with building his governing team yesterday, ignoring President Donald Trump's refusal to accept defeat and the present administration's efforts to block a smooth power transmission.
On Wednesday, Biden, who has shrugged off Trump's challenge to his victory, named long-time adviser Ron Klain as his White House chief of staff, his first major appointment.
The appointment came as CNN reported that the State Department, in an unprecedented move, was preventing Biden from accessing a stack of messages from foreign leaders.
Traditionally, the State Department supports all communications for the president-elect, which is why many countries began sending messages to State over the weekend. But with Biden prohibited from accessing State Department resources by the Trump administration, because President Donald Trump refuses to accept Biden's victory, dozens of incoming messages have not been received.
Biden's team is in touch with foreign governments without State Department involvement, and he has held numerous calls with leaders, including Germany's Angela Merkel and Canada's Justin Trudeau. But they are operating without the logistical and translation support that the State Department operations center provides.
Not only is Biden being blocked by the State Department from receiving messages and assistance facilitating and from preparing for calls, on Tuesday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to acknowledge Biden's victory, saying that "there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration," igniting a furor and roiling diplomats.
Biden is also being blocked from getting the same intelligence briefings as the president, known as the President's Daily Brief, and should the Trump administration continue to block a typical transition close to Inauguration Day on January 20, there are concerns Biden's administration will be playing catch-up the day he takes office.
Trump remains in office until Biden's inauguration on Jan 20.
After the appointment of a Ron Klain as his White House chief of staff, attention is now expected to shift to Biden's picks for cabinet posts, though aides have so far given few clues about when announcements will be made.
On foreign policy, Anthony Blinken, a diplomat and longtime confidant, is seen as a possible choice for Secretary of State or National Security Adviser.
Whoever is chosen for Treasury Secretary will have to cope with a recession and joblessness, as well as serving as the fulcrum to address wealth inequality, climate change and other issues.
Klain, who served as President Barack Obama's "Ebola Czar" in 2014 during an outbreak of that virus in West Africa, is expected to take a leading role in the Biden administration's response to the nationwide spike in Covid-19 cases.
In Klain, Biden brings in a trusted and experienced operative who also served as vice president Al Gore's top aide during Bill Clinton's administration.
As Biden's chief of staff during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Klain helped oversee the implementation of the $787 billion Recovery Act that boosted the then-cratering economy.
Meanwhile Trump has focused on efforts to overturn the election's results in closely contested states, despite presenting no evidence of irregularities that could affect the outcome, and a skeptical reception from judges.
Since the election was called for Biden by major news organizations on Saturday, Trump has maintained a minimal public schedule, preferring instead to air his grievances on Twitter, and has not addressed the climbing virus caseload nationwide.
Biden has claimed enough of the battleground states to surpass the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the presidency. He is also winning the popular vote by more than 5.2 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points, with a few states still counting ballots.
As Trump, the first US president to lose a re-election bid since 1992, desperately tries to cling to power, Democrats and other critics have accused him of aiming to undermine public trust in the US election system and delegitimize Biden's victory through unproven, anecdotal claims of voter fraud.
In the meantime, Trump's 2020 campaign continued to fight a rearguard action, bringing a new lawsuit in Michigan, where Trump was losing by more than 148,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points, according to Edison Research.
Judges have tossed out several Trump lawsuits, and legal experts say the litigation has no serious chance of changing the overall outcome.
Georgia's Republican Secretary of State said on Wednesday there was no sign yet of widespread fraud in his state's vote count, where Biden currently has a 14,000 vote lead over Trump.
Brad Raffensperger, in an interview with CNN, said he has ordered a hand recount because of the closeness of the vote count, but he believed votes had so far been tallied accurately. Biden's current lead, with nearly all votes counted, is 0.3%.