Certification of Biden's election

Good prayer to wind it up by the Congressional chaplain.

WTF?

The Pentagon has called a halt to transition meetings with Biden's team. Interesting timing when we've just learned of a hacking breach of major US government agencies, including the DoD.

On Friday, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller announced a two-week pause in transition meetings with Joe Biden’s administration transition team, with some Friday meetings already being rescheduled.

In a statement to American Military News, Miller described the move as a “mutually-agreed upon” pause.

[...]

Miller said the two-week pause will is to allow requests for information “on OWS and COVID-19 information to guarantee a flawless transition.”

“After the mutually-agreed upon holiday pause, which begins tomorrow, we will continue with the transition and rescheduled meetings from today,” Miller said.

[...]

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported Pentagon officials were refusing to let the Biden team meet with various military intelligence offices. The Pentagon issued a public statement denying the reporting, while one current defense official told the Washington Post that issues with the transition are actually attributable to Biden’s transition team, which he said tried to directly contact agencies to arrange their visits, rather than submit meeting requests through the Pentagon.

  American Military News

And what? They had to be punished?

Today, Axios reported a Pentagon official also downplayed the latest report of a delay in the transition efforts, calling it “a simple delay of the last few scheduled meetings until after the new year.”

The official told Axios that Miller’s order delayed fewer than two-dozen meetings, but that the DoD staff needed for the meetings were being overwhelmed by the number of meetings they had already participated in.

“These same senior leaders needed to do their day jobs and were being consumed by transition activities,” the official told Axios. “With the holidays we are taking a knee for two weeks. We are still committed to a productive transition.”

"Taking a knee"?

The day after Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and appointed Miller to serve in the acting role, three top Pentagon officials resigned.

Biden spokesperson Yohannes Abraham directly contradicted acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller's claims that the two teams "mutually agreed" to pause the interviews until after the holiday.

[...]

Meetings planned for Friday were postponed due to "rapidly changing priorities here," said a defense official, citing the FDA's approval of a second coronavirus vaccine, a possible government shutdown, and a massive hack of U.S. government agencies.

  Politico

Making the meetings even more important than ever.

"There have been many agencies and departments that have facilitated the exchange of info and meetings over the past few weeks," Abraham said. "There have been pockets of recalcitrance and DoD is one of them."

Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki added that while the career officials at DoD have been "cooperative and helpful," the team has had "isolated" issues with Trump political appointees.

Imagine that.

Meetings between DoD officials and the transition team got off to a late start on Nov. 24, due to a delay in approval by the General Services Administration, which must greenlight cooperation. The approval came 16 days after Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election.

This marks the second time in less than three weeks that the Pentagon has addressed reports that defense officials have blocked requests from the Biden team to meet with department leaders.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

What might Trump be doing during Biden's inaugural address?

First of all, he gets a pass if there's no in-person address. And even if there is, it will be sparsely attended because of Covid, so we know Trump will make disparaging remarks about Biden's attendance numbers forever.

Donald Trump is discussing different ways to disrupt the impending Joe Biden era, chief among them by announcing another run against him.

According to three people familiar with the conversations, the president, who refuses to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election as he clearly did, has not just talked to close advisers and confidants about a potential 2024 run to reclaim the White House but about the specifics of a campaign launch. The conversations have explored, among other things, how Trump could best time his announcement so as to keep the Republican Party behind him for the next four years. Two of these knowledgeable sources said the president has, in the past two weeks, even floated the idea of doing a 2024-related event during Biden’s inauguration week, possibly on Inauguration Day.

  Daily Beast

He'll do SOMEthing to call attention to himself that day.

The president and some of his closest associates have already started surveying prominent donors to get a sense of who would be with him, or perhaps against him, if he chose to run in the 2024 election. Some top Trump allies have told The Daily Beast that they are doing what they can to stay in the president’s good graces, calculating that doing so will help ensure a seat at the table and a future in the party—in the event he runs again.

Hitch your wagon to a batshit crazy loser. Sounds like a great plan.

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the president has privately bragged that he’d still remain in the spotlight, even if Biden is in the Oval Office, in part because the news media will keep regularly covering him since—as Trump has assessed—he gets the news outlets ratings and those same outlets find Biden “boring.”

[...]

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that during an Oval Office meeting earlier this month between Trump, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, Vice President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the president said he planned on running in 2024, if the 2020 election results were not nullified by Trump’s attorneys.

“If you do that—and I think I speak for everybody in the room—we’re with you 100 percent,” O’Brien told the president, according to the Bloomberg report.

Oh, I bet Mike Pence isn't. He'll be wanting to run on his own.  And I wouldn't be surprised if Mike Pompeo wants to do the same.

Trump’s refusal to concede has been supplemented by an attempt to make it harder for Biden to reverse his policy achievements. Indeed, even before Election Day 2020, various Trump officials working in the administration were charting paths forward to make it harder for Biden to reenter the Iran nuclear agreement.

So, it's just a coincidence, I'm sure, that Pompeo recently secretly met with Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu, and few days later a major Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Finally

Three weeks after the election, the White House has given formal approval for President-elect Joe Biden to receive the President's Daily Brief.

[...]

It follows a formal notice by the General Services Administration Monday night that the formal transition of government can proceed.

[...]

Coordination on when Biden will receive his first briefing is currently underway.

[...]

Receiving a classified intelligence briefing is typically one of the first rights of a presidential candidate after winning the election. It contains information about pressing national security issues that the new president will soon face. But Biden has yet to receive an intelligence briefing because of Trump's effort to overturn the results of the election, which cause confusion inside the federal government over whether a transition could begin.

[...]

The PDB is often tailored to the President currently in office. President George W. Bush preferred being briefed orally by his top intelligence aides while President Barack Obama often read through his on a secure tablet. Trump often received his in late-morning sessions with career intelligence officials, though at times it disappeared from his schedule altogether.

  CNN

Jesus wept.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Finally

The federal General Services Administration has notified President-elect Joe Biden that the Trump administration is ready to start the transition of power, CNN reported Monday.

[...]

The decision comes shortly after the Michigan Board of Canvassers on Monday voted to certify the state’s election after one of the Republicans on the panel joined Democrats in supporting the measure, dealing a blow to President Trump’s efforts to upend President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the Electoral College.

  NY Post

But now we see what actually happened. Murphy got called in to a House hearing.

The federal agency that is withholding funding from President-elect Joe Biden’s transition by refusing to “ascertain” his victory over President Donald Trump said Monday that it is willing to grant House Democrats’ requests for a briefing.

[...]

Under the law, Murphy has the power to free up millions of dollars that are allocated toward presidential transition spending. The transition can avail itself of those funds only after Murphy ascertains the winner of the election.

[...]

But the head of that agency, General Services Administration chief Emily Murphy, will not be leading that briefing, despite the demand from House Committee chairs that she “personally” explain herself.

Rather, a GSA spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC that Deputy Administrator Allison Brigati will “host a 30 minute briefing on Monday, November 30” — a week later than Democrats had asked for in a frustrated joint letter sent to Murphy last Thursday.

The spokesperson also said that GSA will host another, “in-person-only” briefing for staff on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

In a response released Monday afternoon, the Democrats appeared to reject the offer, demanding instead that Murphy brief them by Tuesday.

[...]

“Every additional day that is wasted is a day that the safety, health, and well-being of the American people is imperiled as the incoming Biden-Harris Administration is blocked from fully preparing for the coronavirus pandemic, our nation’s dire economic crisis, and our national security.”

[...]

They accused the Trump appointee of “undermining the orderly transfer of power, impairing the incoming Administration’s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, hampering its ability to address our nation’s dire economic crisis, and endangering our national security.”

[...]

“With your refusal to abide by the procedures established by the Presidential Transition Act, you are complicit in an unprecedented challenge to our Democratic norms and are endangering the lives and livelihoods of people across the nation.”

  CNBC

I guess she didn't get an offer of a Trump-paid lawyer (as if that would help her, considering the lawyers he's able to get) or a pardon should she get into legal trouble.

UPDATE:  No wonder Shinkle abstained.

I wouldn't be surprised to read in the future that the Shinkles were paid.

I can't be sure what this means

What needs to be done according to protocols is she needs to sign the papers allowing Biden to use government resources to set up his transition team.  She should have already done it.  Is he saying he told her to go ahead?

UPDATE:  The story.

Burn it all down

Top Trump loyalists are trying to cling to power by firing critics, rehiring other loyalists, instructing federal government employees that the election isn't over yet, and threatening appointees that their future work prospects could get crushed if they try to abandon ship now.

In leaked audio of a Monday conference call with USAID staff, obtained by Axios, the agency's top-ranking official John Barsa told staff to "play until the whistle blows" and that "DC, at the end of the day, is a really small town" — which participants read as a threat to anyone who starts job hunting.

[...]

Officials tell Axios they expect CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray to face the axe next.

[...]

Barsa also told staff that "there is no transition in place" until the General Services Administration makes a determination about who won the election, which GSA administrator Emily Murphy, a Trump appointee, has thus far resisted.

Barsa referenced Friday's firing of USAID's second-highest ranking official, Bonnie Glick, saying simply, "Bonnie is no longer with us."

[...]

A source familiar with internal discussions says some agency officials have been told to operate under the assumption Trump is serving a second term.

And as CNN's Jake Tapper first reported, and Axios confirmed, White House Presidential Personnel Office director John McEntee "is spreading the word throughout the administration that if he hears of anyone looking for another job they will be fired."

  Axios

There should be mass resignations.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Here's your peaceful transition

Just the tip of the iceberg.  Things are about to get seriously fucked up.  He's going to do rallies to incite revolt.  Proud Boys are on standby.

Also...

Deconstructing America

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order creating a new classification of “policy-making” federal employees that could strip swaths of the federal workforce of civil service protections just before the next president is sworn into office.

Positions in the new Schedule F would effectively constitute at-will employment, without any of the protections against adverse personnel actions that most federal workers currently enjoy, although individual agencies are tasked with establishing “rules to prohibit the same personnel practices prohibited” by Title 5 of the U.S. Code. The order also instructs the Federal Labor Relations Authority to examine whether Schedule F employees should be removed from their bargaining units, a move that would bar them from being represented by federal employee unions.

[...]

The order sets a swift timetable for implementation: Agencies have 90 days to conduct a “preliminary” review of their workforces to determine who should be moved into the new employee classification—a deadline that coincides with Jan. 19, the day before the next presidential inauguration.

[...]

“The [1883] Pendleton Act is clearly in the sights of this executive order,” said Donald Kettl, the Sid Richardson professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “It wants to undo what the Pendleton Act and subsequent civil service laws tried to accomplish, which was to create a career civil service with expertise that is both accountable to elected officials but also a repository of expertise in government. The argument here is that anyone involved in policymaking can be swept into this new classification, and once they’re in they’re subject to political review and dismissal for any reason.”

[...]

“This executive order strips due process rights and protections from perhaps hundreds of thousands of federal employees and will enable political appointees and other officials to hire and fire these workers at will,” [American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett] Kelley said. “Through this order, President Trump has declared war on the professional civil service by giving himself the authority to fill the government with his political cronies who will pledge their unwavering loyalty to him—not to America.”

  GovExec.com

Despicable. And just another reason why we need to do away with executive orders.

He's already fired too many.  He doesn't want to answer to anybody about it.

The House of Representatives is now considering a bill to amend the Inspector General Act to limit the reasons for which inspectors general can be fired and to require the president to produce documentation showing cause exists before firing any of them. That’s a good idea, even if there’s little chance the Republican-led Senate will consider it, and it may be challenged in court on constitutional grounds. Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, has offered another worthwhile suggestion, this one for whistleblowers. She urges Congress to give federal workers the right to press claims of whistleblower retaliation in jury trials. As for the civil service, I encourage Congress to shore up due process protections for career federal employees by guaranteeing all of them the right to seek independent review of major disciplinary actions against them, with ample time for processing their complaints and filing appeals.

[...]

I believe we need reform, yet there’s a limit to what laws can do. The Supreme Court has weakened the conflict-of-interest laws we have on the books. Trump and his Republican wrecking crew are ripping out the floorboards under the government ethics program. His administration has taught us the difference between theory and application and shown us what immunity to accountability looks like. What good are laws if no one in power will enforce them?

  NY Books

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.