“We are simply not getting all the information we need from the outgoing government in the main areas of national security,” said Biden, after receiving a virtual briefing from members of his national security and foreign policy review teams.
“It is nothing less than irresponsibility, in my opinion,” he said.
The president-elect said his team “needs a clear picture of our force’s stance around the world and of our operations to stop our enemies. We need full visibility of the budgetary 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. “
A Defense Department spokesman told CNN that there are three briefings / interviews scheduled for this week with Biden’s transition team. Two of the briefings address coronavirus issues and the other is about “cybersecurity”.
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller defended the Pentagon’s transition work in a statement on Monday, publicizing the department’s “164 interviews with more than 400 employees” and saying the agency “provided more than 5,000 pages of documents – much more than initially requested by the Biden transition team. “
“DoD efforts are already outpacing those of recent administrations with more than three weeks to go and we continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and respond to any and all requests for information within our reach,” said Miller.
Still, a source familiar with the situation told CNN that critical meetings remain pending.
A transition official told CNN that the Department of Defense continues to “deny and delay” meetings with members of the agency’s review team.
“There has been no substantial progress since the transition authorities spoke about the Department’s political leadership intransigence earlier this month,” the official said. “As the president-elect has alluded, no department is more important to our national security than the Department of Defense, and the unwillingness to work together can have consequences far beyond January 20th.”
Biden said there are a number of urgent national security issues that his government is preparing to address when he takes office next month, including the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis and the humanitarian crisis on the southern border of the United States. He reiterated his promise to drastically depart from President Donald Trump’s isolationist foreign policy and instead rebuild alliances around the world and work with partners to address global issues.
“We will have to regain the confidence of a world that has started to find ways to work around us or work without us,” said Biden.
The president-elect said that part of the discussion at the briefing earlier in the day focused on the strategic challenges that China and Russia pose for the United States. He talked about “modernizing our defense priorities to better stop aggression in the future, instead of continuing to over-invest in legacy systems designed to face the threats of the past”.
Biden echoed his comments last week, calling the recent cyber attack on US federal agencies and companies a serious risk to US national security. Trump, on the other hand, downplayed the attack and contradicted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s public statements linking the hack to Russia.
Biden talked about building coalitions to compete with China and holding the country’s government accountable “for its commercial abuses, technology, human rights and other fronts”.
The president-elect also focused on the humanitarian crisis on the southern border of the United States and on the processing of asylum seekers.
“We are going to institute humane and orderly responses. That means rebuilding the capacity we need to process asylum seekers safely and quickly without creating a short-term crisis in the midst of this deadly pandemic,” said Biden.
The Trump administration has taken steps to make it more difficult for people to apply for asylum in the United States during his presidency.
Biden talked about the mass distribution of authorized Covid-19 vaccines and said his government would use all the powers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fight the virus.
“Many of the agencies that are essential to our security have suffered enormous damage,” said Biden. “Many of them have been depleted in personnel, capacity and morale.”
“All of this makes it more difficult for our government to protect the American people, to defend our vital interests in a world where threats are constantly evolving and our adversaries are constantly adapting,” said the president-elect.
Biden praised career officials in government departments and said his team had received “exemplary cooperation” from some agencies.
The briefing was expected to be less about specific headlines in the news and to focus more broadly on the country’s institutional health and well-being on the national security and foreign policy fronts.
“This bombing was a reminder of the destructive power that an individual or small group can muster and the need for continuous surveillance across all sectors,” said Biden, speaking from Wilmington, Delaware. He thanked the officers who evacuated the area and first aid at the scene.
Trump did not publicly comment on the explosion in Nashville on Monday afternoon, but the White House said in a press release last week that he had been informed of the incident.
A different approach soon
He promised to undo Trump’s isolationist foreign policy “America First” and restore the United States’ reputation on the world stage. Biden pledged to rebuild international alliances and said that global challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis, require partnerships and international coordination.
Trump, on the other hand, has denigrated and questioned several of the U.S.’s longstanding alliances, including with NATO, and has withdrawn the U.S. from various international bodies and treaties. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate deal, the nuclear deal with Iran and the World Health Organization and other international pacts.
Biden will inherit a number of urgent challenges when he takes office next month as president, the main one being the coronavirus pandemic, which killed more than 334,000 Americans on Monday afternoon.
The president-elect has appointed several key members of his foreign policy and national security teams, including his longtime foreign policy advisor, Antony Blinken, as his candidate for secretary of state. Biden chose retired army general Lloyd Austin, a former United States Central Commander, to be his defense secretary.
He also appointed Avril Haines, a former senior CIA official and deputy national security adviser, as his choice for the director of national intelligence, and Alejandro Mayorkas, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to lead DHS. Haines would be the first woman to lead the US intelligence community and Mayorkas would be the first Latino to command the Department of Homeland Security.
This story has been updated with more reports.
CNN’s Arlette Saenz, Ryan Browne and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.