Politico | Joe Biden rips Pentagon over transition foot-dragging: ‘We have encountered roadblocks’
- The US president-elect says adversaries might look to exploit a ‘window of confusion’ during the change of administrations
- Biden urges the Defence Department to share information with his team, citing the recent hack of US agencies and the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Nick Niedzwiadek and Lara Seligman on politico.com on December 28, 2020.
US President-elect Joe Biden on Monday called out political appointees at the Defence Department, saying they were putting up “roadblocks” and keeping his transition team at bay with less than a month until he becomes commander in chief.
“Right now we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,” Biden said in Delaware after a briefing with members of his national security team. “It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.”
Biden said that what he sees as foot-dragging on the part of the Trump administration is particularly galling in light of the recently disclosed massive cyberattack that hit much of the federal government and other global threats. Biden also said the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville, Tennessee, underscored the importance of the issue.
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“We need to make sure that nothing is lost in the handoff between administrations,” the president-elect said. “We need full visibility into the budget planning under way at the Defence Department and other agencies in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit.”
Biden reiterated concerns that the Pentagon’s political leadership, made up of newly installed Trump loyalists, is obstructing the normal transition process. In particular, Biden said his team needed “full visibility” into the Pentagon’s budget planning, noting that adversaries might look to exploit a “window of confusion” during the change of administrations.
“We have encountered roadblocks from the political leadership at the Department of Defence and the Office of Management and Budget,” he said.
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Biden’s comments re-upped tensions with the Pentagon just over a week after defence officials abruptly cancelled a series of meetings with the transition that had been scheduled for December 18.
Defence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the two teams had agreed on a two-week holiday pause and that the meetings would resume in the new year, but the Biden transition executive director, Yohannes Abraham, rebutted that claim.
The Pentagon has continued to “deny and delay” meetings with Biden’s agency review team members, a transition official told POLITICO on Monday after the president-elect’s remarks, noting that the two sides had made “no substantial progress” since the issue first came to light.
“As the president-elect alluded to, no department is more pivotal to our national security than the Department of Defence, and an unwillingness to work together could have consequences well beyond January 20,” the official said.
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Biden on Monday made a point to differentiate the chilly reception his team has received from officials at the Pentagon, and to a lesser extent OMB, from other parts of the federal government apparatus.
“For some agencies, our teams received exemplary cooperation from the career staff in those agencies,” Biden said. “From others – most notably the Department of Defence – we encountered obstruction from the political leadership of that department.”
The president-elect has recently stepped up his criticism of the Trump administration’s handling of the transfer of power, which has been complicated by the outgoing president’s refusal to accept his electoral defeat to Biden and his legally dubious attempts to stay in office by subverting the will of the American electorate.
Some administration officials, wary of repercussions from the president or his loyalists, have been wary of seeming too eager to assist with the transfer of power and have at times received contradictory messages from the White House about preparing for the end stages of the current administration.
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Biden also seemed to try to manage expectations of what his administration would be able to do from the get-go in unwinding policies initiated under Trump, including on immigration and America’s role on the international stage.
“These are hard issues, and the current administration has made them much harder by working to erode our capacity,” Biden said. “It’s going to take time to rebuild that capacity.”
He said that the US would have to repair relationships with other countries that were strained under Trump’s America First philosophy, but that doing so was necessary to counter China’s growing political influence abroad.
“We’re stronger and more effective when we’re flanked by nations that share our vision of the future of our world,” Biden said. “That’s how we multiply the impact of our efforts and make the efforts more sustainable.”
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