While media outlets on Saturday projected Biden as the winner, President Trump has not conceded the election.
“We have been told: Ignore the media, wait for it to be official from the government,” said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.
The GSA, the government’s real estate arm, remained for a third day the proxy in the battle. Administrator Emily Murphy, a Trump political appointee who has lasted a full term in an administration where turnover has been the norm, is refusing to sign paperwork that releases Biden’s $6.3 million share of nearly $10 million in transition resources and gives his team access to agency officials and information.
In an indication of growing frustration among Biden transition officials, they organized a call with reporters Monday night to lay out some of the government services that Murphy’s decision is denying them. Those include State Department-facilitated calls with foreign leaders and access to secure facilities where they can review classified information.
The team is evaluating its legal options and growing increasingly alarmed that the stalemate could drag on and impede its work. The campaign has prepared for weeks for the possibility that Trump would not move forward with a peaceful transfer of power.
Still, with acutely high stakes for Biden during one of the most volatile periods in American history — with a weak economy and a government preparing for the daunting task of distributing a coronavirus vaccine — a shadow transition is beginning to take shape. Democrats have been out of power for just four years, and the Biden team is starting to reach out to its many contacts in and out of government, according to transition and former government officials.
On Monday many agencies, from the U.S. Agency for International Development to Veterans Affairs, took legal cover from Murphy’s decision to hold off on “ascertaining” an election winner. Political appointees have told their staffers, including career civil servants, not to respond to outreach from the Biden team, if there is any. No formal briefings on agencies’ projects, budgets, trouble spots or day-to-day operations — crucial building blocks that help an administration form a new government — are taking place.
The top political appointee at USAID, which provides billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to foreign countries, told his staff that the agency would not cooperate with the transition until Murphy signed off.
John Barsa, acting deputy administrator, told colleagues that Biden had not won the election, emphasizing the importance of not abetting the transition process, two people familiar with his conversations said. A 440-page briefing book for the next president’s team sits ready and waiting at the agency.
“The only official announcement about an election result that matters is from the head of GSA,” Barsa said, according to a recording of a call published by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.
Elsewhere in the government, months of preparation by career officials to relay information to the incoming team hung in limbo, and some senior staffers had received no communications from top leaders at their agencies.
“There is a process underway that is guided by law, and we will await conclusion of that process,” a VA spokeswoman said. At the Environmental Protection Agency, a spokesman said transition planning would be “inappropriate for us to discuss as votes are still being counted” and referred questions to the GSA. The Office of Management and Budget was “not transitioning” as of Monday, an official there said.
The career staff in the sprawling VA system was putting the final touches on a voluminous set of briefing documents for the Biden team, though, covering policies on private health care, coronavirus protocols and a massive electronic health records project, among hundreds of others, officials familiar with the planning said.
The refusal to carry out a tradition that has taken place immediately after most elections has quickly become another flash point in a divided country. Democrats on Capitol Hill condemned Trump for undermining a smooth transition of power and demanded that Murphy release $9.9 million in taxpayer-funded transition funding, which can be used to hire staff and buy equipment.
Republicans defended the president’s right to recount or question votes in battleground states that have been called for Biden. They settled on the contested 2000 race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush as their North Star, pointing out that the GSA chief appointed by Bill Clinton waited for a resolution before passing the transition…
Read More: White House tells agencies not to cooperate with the Biden transition