By Nic Woods
Some important members of the Trump administration – including Donald J. Trump himself – are in denial over last week’s election result and so America must suffer the consequences of rejecting four more years of him.
In just one 24-hour post-election news cycle the week after former Vice President Biden was declared winner:
• News organizations had to cover not one, but two, press conferences where ranking administration officials acted like an election never happened, much less that their boss lost.
• Attorney General William Barr handed to Justice department prosecutors the authority to investigate claims of voter fraud.
• Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, refused to sign papers to release to Biden $6.3 million of $10 million set aside for his transition because it’s unclear to her who had won.
•Federal agencies have been told to proceed with Trump’s fiscal 2022 budget.
•Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and demoted Federal Energy Regulatory Committee Chairman Neil Chatterjee in a spree of administration figures deemed not sufficiently loyal.
•Installed Mike Ellis as general counsel to the National Security Agency, making him more difficult to fire (except Trump may not remember issuing an executive order that would, in fact, make him easier to fire).
There are many more examples that seem like random individual meltdowns, but they all matter – they are as complex a power play the Trump administration can muster in its three-pronged strategy, along with fighting math in the courts and working up the base with baseless claims of voter fraud.
This strategy – using the war on election math to hinder Biden’s transition as much as bureaucratically possible – is what is left if the other two don’t work and it offers valuable insight into the administration and what they really think of their opponent, Joe Biden.
About this time four years ago. Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey and a late-to-the-bandwagon Trump supporter, volunteered for the thankless task of heading the transition team of the newly elected Donald J. Trump.
It was an offer Trump initially rejected because, according to Michael Lewis, author of “The Fifth Risk,” which talks about the missed opportunities of Trump’s own transition, “why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president?”
Well, Christie said, it was required.
The Presidential Transition Act, which Congress first passed in 1963 and has been amended four times -- as recently as 2019 – to “recognize the increasing complexities of presidential transitions” was passed to ease and promote the orderly transfer of power because “any disruption occasioned by the transfer of executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.”
The act has key national security implications as well that involve background checks for the high-level members of the new administration so they could be done by the inauguration. The president-elect, under the act, is required to be given a classified summary as soon as possible after the election on national security threats, covert military operations and pending decisions on possible uses of military force.
So yes, the transition is a big deal and while Trump didn’t know that four years ago, he knows it enough now to try to impede Biden’s administration by pretending there remains some way the courts can shake out a few votes that Joe Biden will just give up and leave. And, if Biden’s stubborn enough to stay, well, he’ll be behind the eight-ball, won’t get anything accomplished and half the country will be against him.
But Biden isn’t some outsider who doesn’t know how Washington works. He’s spent 36 years in the Senate and ran for president one time more than Trump has. He has connections, including Trump’s predecessor, many of whom are experts in their field.
Unlike Trump four years ago, Biden knows the act and what he should be getting from it. Biden will listen to the experts, though they are being purged from the Trump administration at a rapid rate.
Joe Biden also has the resources and knowledge base to still have a functional government and a peaceful transfer of power the third week of January, regardless of what Trump does.
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