President-elect Joe Biden said on Monday that his transition team had faced “blockades” and “obstructions” from Trump administration leaders at key agencies, hampering the new government’s efforts to prepare for the presidency.
But one such agency chief, acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, resisted Biden’s criticism, marking the latest dispute between President Donald Trump’s Pentagon and President-elect.
“The truth is that many of the agencies that are critical to our security have suffered enormous damage,” said Biden during comments in Delaware, after a briefing from his national security and foreign policy review teams.
“Many of them have been depleted in personnel, capacity and morale. Political processes have atrophied or been set aside,” he said.
Biden, who is expected to take office in less than a month, highlighted the Department of Defense and the Office of Administration and Budget in his speech.
“From some agencies, our team has received exemplary cooperation,” said Biden. “From others, mainly from the Department of Defense, we find obstruction of that department’s political leadership.”
He later added, “We encountered obstacles from political leadership in the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget. At the moment, we are simply not getting all the information we need from the outgoing government in key national security areas.”
“It is nothing less than irresponsibility, in my opinion,” said Biden.
In a statement on Monday, acting Defense Chief Miller defended his agency’s coordination with Biden’s team.
“The Department of Defense conducted 164 interviews with more than 400 employees and provided more than 5,000 pages of documents – far more than initially requested by the Biden transition team,” said the statement from Miller.
Included in this statement is a bulleted list of “transition facts”, which indicates that all interviews with the transition team are, for the first time, being conducted virtually in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
The agency’s efforts “already exceed those of recent administrations with more than three weeks ahead of them,” said Miller, “and we continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and respond to any and all requests for information in our field” .
Department of Defense officials, the statement added, “have been working with the utmost professionalism to support transition activities on a short schedule and will continue to do so in a transparent and collegial manner, maintaining the Department’s best traditions. The American people do not expect less and that’s what I’m still committed to.
The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Biden applauded his agency review teams for doing an “excellent job” despite the pandemic and delays in receiving federal funds from the Trump General Services Administration. These obstacles came about when the president refused to grant concessions to Biden and his campaign legal team and others continue their efforts to overturn the election.
A pressing concern, said Biden, is to ensure “that nothing is lost in the transfer between administrations”.
“We need full visibility of the budget planning underway at the Department of Defense and other agencies to avoid any window of confusion or recovery that our opponents might try to exploit.”
Although the president-elect’s comments were among the most critical of the Trump administration in the Wilmington pulpit, they were not the first instance of Biden’s struggles with the Trump Department of Defense.
Tensions between the Pentagon and Biden’s team spread to the public earlier this month because of a dispute over Miller’s decision to cancel meetings with the transition team for the rest of the year.
Miller said in a statement that there was a “mutually agreed holiday break”, but a spokesman for Biden replied that no deal was made.
“Let me be clear: there were no mutually agreed holidays,” transition spokesman Yohannes Abraham told reporters.
Weeks after the election, Defense officials confirmed the start of the transition process within the Pentagon.
“Today’s first meeting was by videoconference. It was a good and productive meeting, in which we established some of the basic rules,” said Tom Muir, director of Washington Headquarters Services, during a meeting at the Pentagon on November 24.
“They are looking forward to participating in the discussions here at the Pentagon,” added Muir, who facilitates the transition process.
Muir said at the time that Biden’s team will have dedicated office space at the Pentagon and adequate access to intelligence.