Senate GOP say Biden team doesn’t need immediate access to government to begin transition

Senate Republicans said Tuesday that Joe Biden, whom media groups have projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, doesn’t need authority from the General Services Administration (GSA) to formally begin the transition of power.

Emily Murphy, the GSA administrator and a Trump appointee, has not yet issued a letter of ascertainment to allow Biden’s team to formally begin the transfer of power.

Without it, Biden’s advisers don’t have access to government offices or secure briefing facilities, which would allow them to begin background checks of potential nominees.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said steps to allow the orderly transfer of power “will be taken at the appropriate time.”

“I don’t think anything that’s occurred so far interrupts an ordinary process of moving through the various steps that I indicated and allowing, if there is a new administration, it to work through the transition. All of these steps will be taken at the appropriate time,” McConnell told reporters after being reelected for another term as majority leader.

Biden does not formally take the oath of office until Jan. 20, but it is customary for the declared winner of the presidential election, if they are not the incumbent, to be given advanced access to government funds and facilities to begin preparing for their first 100 days in office.

The transition from the Clinton to the Bush administration in 2000 was delayed because of a legal battle over the results of the vote count in Florida, which required the Supreme Court to intervene in mid-December.

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) noted on Tuesday that George W. Bush didn’t receive transition authority and funding until later in December of that year.

“I think the GSA addition to the process is relatively new. I know that George W. Bush 20 years ago didn’t get any money until late in December. There’s nothing that stops a transition effort from doing everything they need to do and if it turns out that the president-elect is the president-elect, eventually they’ll have that help,” he said.

“We had transitions long before we gave elected presidents money to have a transition with. If Joe Biden doesn’t know what he’s doing now in a way that lets him move forward with the transition, he would never know what he’s doing,” he said.

“He’s been doing this for 50 years. They can do everything that they need to be doing from the point of a transition without the GSA making a determination quicker than the administration thinks it should,” Blunt added.