Joe Biden listens as his choice for Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, addresses reporters, Wilmington, Delaware, December 9, 2020 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
President-elect Joe Biden says his transition team is facing “obstruction” from parts of the Trump Administration.
Speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said agencies such as the Defense Department were not cooperating:
Right now, my team isn’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas.
It’s nothing short of irresponsible. pic.twitter.com/T67NbgSFLl
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 29, 2020
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were briefed yesterday by members of the transition’s agency review teams dealing with national security and foreign policy.
The President-elect said his official “encountered roadblocks” from political leaders at the Office of Management and Budget as well as the Defense Department: “Right now, as our nation is in a period of transition, we need to make sure that nothing is lost in the handoff between administrations.”
He concluded:
It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility. My team needs a clear picture of our force posture around the world and our operations to deter our enemies. We need full visibility into the budget planning underway at the Defense Department and other agencies in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit.
Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller maintained that he and the department were continuing “to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and answer any and all requests for information in our purview”.
He claimed “164 interviews with over 400 officials, and provided over 5,000 pages of documents – far more than initially requested by Biden’s transition team”.
Biden: “Enormous Damage”
The transition was blocked for weeks as Donald Trump refused to accept the outcome of the November 3 election. The head of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy, did not issue the letter of authorization until November 23.
But Biden’s team still struggled to get meetings and information from the the Pentagon. In mid-December, the transition’s executive director Yohannes Abraham cited “isolated resistance in some corners, including from political appointees within the Department of Defense” and “an abrupt halt in the already limited cooperation there”.
Acting Defense Secretary Miller claimed a “mutually agreed-upon holiday pause”, but Abraham said there was no such agreement.
The difficulty has been compounded by Trump’s placement of loyalists at the top of the Pentagon after the election. Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and purged the leadership. Then his team installed members such as Kash Patel, best known for his attempt to bury the Trump-Russia investigation; conspiracy theorist Anthony Tata; and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a protégé of the disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Last week, as he criticized Trump for dismissing the Russian hacking of Government agencies and private companies, Biden said, “The Defense Department won’t even brief us on many things.”
See also Trump Rejects Pompeo Over Russia and Hacking Attacks
Miller’s office said Biden’s statement was “patently false”.
Biden explained on Monday:
The truth is, many of the agencies that are critical to our security have incurred enormous damage. Many of them have been hollowed out — in personnel, capacity and in morale….
Right now, there’s an enormous vacuum. We’re going to have to regain the trust and confidence of a world that has begun to find ways to work around us or work without us.
DOJ statistician claims evidence for 289,000 fraudulent ballots: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3756988
“The estimates here indicate that there were 70,000 to 79,000 “excess” votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Adding Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, the total increases to up to 289,000 excess votes.”
Umm, John Lott doesn’t work for the Department of Justice, although he may have been used as a consultant at some point.
“[Trump advisor Peter] Navarro’s call to postpone the [Georgia Senate] runoffs amid baseless claims of voter fraud was in reference to a recently published report by John Lott, a researcher who has done work for the National Rifle Association and whose studies on crimes committed by undocumented immigrants were debunked by the Cato Institute….
Lott has also previously baselessly argued that there is little evidence of widespread voter discrimination against Black people using Florida as a case study. That is, of course, not true.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/navarro-calls-postpone-georgia-runoff-boost-trumps-fraud-delusion
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/30/12700222/nra-social-scientist-claims-debunked
Lawsuit to allow VP Pence to throw out Biden electors and replace them with those for Trump: https://electioncases.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Gohmert-v-Pence.pdf
On Jan 6th, the Vice-President will count the votes of 538 electors and declare who is the winner of the election.
The DNI and DOJ are soon to release reports claiming both fraud and foreign interference by China and Iran changed the outcome of the election.
The Vice-President does not count the votes. He merely opens and closes the session.
S.
So who adds up the tally for both candidates?
No one is coming to save Trump. Not Pence, not the GOP, not the judges, and most certainly not the electors. Why set yourself up to be later proven wrong and humiliated? Do you seriously believe it will happen?
“The DNI and DOJ are soon to release reports claiming both fraud and foreign interference by China and Iran changed the outcome of the election.”
Ah, intelligence agencies are good now. Republican and Trumpist obsession with China is even more sad than the Democratic obsession with Russia. Stop blaming other countries for your own problems.