Karen hult, a science professor at virginia tech. Shes also a member of the white house transition project Advisory Board. Thanks for being with us on washington journal. Karen good to be here. Host the white house transition project, tell us about it. This is a nonpartisan, nonprofit entity. It is staffed by Political Science professors and others around the united states. 1990s for thehe white house interview program. They were trying to develop some institutional memory by talking to people that had various white house death and over time. Staff positions over time. They can find out what happens to staff positions for both parties. Directedolved and is by martha i am a member of the Advisory Board along with other colleagues as well as people like norm ornstein and other people from the larger washington community. Providetry to do is nonpartisan backing for what kinds of things have worked and not worked so well in and around the white house when a new president is getting ready to take over. In 2016 whencase President Trump was coming to office and here in 2020 when the president elect biden is likely coming into office, you speak directly with those campaigns or the Transition Teams . Karen i do not personally. What we do begins well before the candidates campaigns put together the Transition Team. But after each party nominates its candidate. What we make available to transition directors our materials. Many will be Password Protected and not available to the general public. But we try to give them information on various offices in the white house as well as where the executive office of the president is. And to ask people that serve in these positions as well as the briefing essays we have done. Requested with people from Transition Teams. But really, we are a resource for the Transition Teams to work with. Like a hugems undertaking to transition to a new presidency. Scope ofn idea on the the individual agencies that need to be covered. It is a huge undertaking. Starting with personnel, there are over 4000 positions a new includingmay fulfill, 1200 that need to be confirmed by the u. S. Senate. When the president leaves the white house, everything leaves the west wing. Computer hard drives, files, everything. Inauguration, they take everything and reinstall Computer Systems and things like that. So when the new white house emptyshows up, they face rooms, empty computers, and have to start from scratch. What the transition project as well as legislation that has been passed is to try to ease the transition process. The have the trail going back to the nominating convention. That is a point at which, according to federal law, each team serving in the white house and the biden team got access to in safepace, computer telephones. Once President Biden is ascertained to be president elect, it opens up resources for the new president. Karen hultuest is on the white house advisory transition Advisory Board. We are talking about the president ial transition, both current and historical. 202 7488000 free democrats. 202 7488001 for republicans. And independence, 202 7488002. What leaves the transition . What leads the transition . Karen what we are hearing about now is the General Services administration. Im using a legal term here, they ascertain who the newly elected president is. What it does is open up Additional Resources for the president elect and the Transition Team. Working with the General Services administration is the office of personnel management, the office of government ethics to make sure the new Transition Team and administration is following ethics tools. According to the law, there is something called the White House Transition Council and executive agencies. These folks have been working since september talking with each other about the next steps of a new transition. The Biden Campaign has been critical of the gsa administrator, Emily W Murphy who is a political appointee of the Trump Administration. The New York Times says miss murphy has the Legal Authority to turn on the transition, releasing 6. 3 million in federal funds budgeted for the effort, making Office Space Available and powering team members to visit offices to request information. But there is no specific provision for when she must act. An ascertainment has not yet been made. She added the gsa and the administrator will continue to abide by fulfill all requirements under the law and adhere to prior precedent established by the Clinton Administration in 2000. What is this ascertainment . Are you familiar with that . Ascertainmentm comes from the statute itself. Thean be thought of of winner of the race is the president elect. What the Trump Administration is doing is using that as precedent, saying that remember in 2000, the year of the hanging theren florida, because was a recount under a great deal of controversy, what was not clear was who the president elect was going to be. Administration decided to not recognize the w bush folks as having won the presidency. They have been steps updated since then. But having said that, it is the case that bill clinton within to george w. Ned up bush and allowed the people to look at some classified briefings so they were not coming in completely cold. Same thingdone the for the biden Transition Team. The what did we learn from 2000 and 2001 experience with george to view bush winning the presidency, his transition delayed by five weeks. Does that affect the appointment of the 4000 appointed positions . Did. yes it especially those that had to be senate confirmed. Undergominees have to thorough background checks by the fbi and a range of others. We should be clear. Nor right now,0 did that mean no transition planning was going on. Theas in 2000 while campaign was going on so that if george w. Bush won, he would be ready to take office on january 20. Late remember back to 2000, we also remember that w bush had a kind of helpful head of the Transition Team while waiting for the results to be issued. Electas Vice President dick cheney that had been chief of staff and the Ford White House and was quite familiar with the rhythms of the federal government. Bidens Transition Team has been working since the spring as well. Cochair of the Transition Team has is ted kaufman who has a history with biden. It was passed in 2015. Host and served in joe bidens seat for a stretch in the u. S. Senate. Karen it was an interim appointment. Exactly. Team has Transition Teams ready. What they are doing is looking at possible nominees for various positions. Presumably, they are looking at getting a white house staff put in order. Soon that they will name a chief of staff or vice President Biden and they continue to do other things. What they cannot do is get what they are unable to do is get access to the various agencies that have in many cases big briefing books ready for the new administration. Those briefing books were due in the fall. They are sitting at the agencies ready to brief the new administration and ready to welcome the Agency Review team, but the teams cannot gain access that vice ascertained president bryden is the president elect. Statutory is the obligation of Government Agencies to prepare for transition . The statuteshat say for Government Agencies is that ,hat is supposed to happen current Government Agencies at the beginning of a president ial Election Year are asked to start planning for the transition. Either the transition to an existing president and the second term or the transition to a new president. Six months out the agencies have to report back on what they are closer afterwe get the candidates are nominated they are also tasked to lead a White House Transition Council and an Agency Review council to develop transition materials and the agencies are bound to do that by law. Hult, a two for karen member of the white house transition project Advisory Board, also a Political Science professor at virginia tech. Tina is from alabama, good morning. Caller good morning. During the transition period with President Trump there was a general fund making calls to heads of state. There was a report that president elect biden is making calls to heads of state. Do you think that justice will be same for both . Prof. Hult thats a good question. Biden notn about mr. Being officially declared a president elect by the General Services administration is that biden does not have the assistance of the state department to facilitate those calls with heads of state. Clearly heads of state have been issuing statements and trying to reach out to mr. Biden. Administration would prefer is they have the facilitation of the state department, that does not seem to be happening. The from massachusetts on democrats line, russell, good morning. Caller good morning, how are you . Know if this is so much under the criminality of the lady who is supposed to approve all this or if its in the constitution. My question would be, what authority would be taken next to force her to sign this over . What it have to go to the courts . I dont see anything in the constitution requiring the gsa lady to sign over this to President Biden. I worry about it because when we dysfunctionality in this society, i can tell you as a taxpayer and a voter, from what i have seen with this whole process played out i can tell you it put a lot of doubt in my the as far as not just government of now but what is to come. Host the question about can that action be forced by the gsa administrator . Prof. Hult thats a good question. Russell is right, its not in the u. S. Constitution. The ascertainment language comes from the president ial transition law. So it is statutory it basically gives the administrator of the gsa the authority to ascertain and its not clear as it might be as we is the president elect certain circumstances. She is well within her statutory bounds to wait to be sure that all the votes have been counted legally. What she may be doing now is saying, i want to wait and see how some of the investigations in some of the court cases are going to continue before i make that ascertainment. Hopes it, though one does not go to this, it may be that the biden team is investigating its own legal possibilities to take the gsa to her to make the ascertainment. At the moment it appears on the face of things that she is acting in accordance with the wall. With the law. The Washington Post writing white house tells agencies not to aid biden transition. They write that the president ial transition act does not specify what factors the gsa administrators must consider when determining the winner of an election. To makeurphy leeway that call. Experts on president ial transition said. A legal challenge from biden could be aimed at her authority to ascertain the results and make an independent judgment when she is taking instructions from a president who has a vested stake in the election. Haveoving forward could National Security implications because the Incoming Administration would be illequipped to handle current threats facing the country. There are a number of legal transitionbiden official head, said, declining to be more specific. Prof. Hult i think thats exactly whats taking place now. I wanted to underscore the National Security implications of this. What the Trump Administration is what mr. Is repeating clinton did for the george w. Bush administration which is to provide that Transition Team with all the intelligence information that Vice President goer was already receiving as Vice President. Host the New York Times writing about the lack of concession complicating security handoff. Lets hear from iris in south michigan. Talking about the president ial transition, iris on the independent line. Caller good morning. That there is not too much security in this whole transition stuff. Changed overat are have to learn everything from scratch. Its like starting a new business every four years. Its like always playing catchup and it does not have a smooth flow. I never knew this occurred, i thought that you get a job in the white house and it is pretty good. It gives you longevity. It doesnt seem to be that way. You have to change people there doesnt seem to be any job security in all this. I never knew this occurred. I thought a new president gets to select their own people and nobody else has acknowledged it. Its the biggest job in the world. Host there are career employees inside the white house. Prof. Hult there are. Thats another thing worth saying, many of the people in the white house change with the new president that comes in, but there are a number of career employees in and around the white house and the National Staff in the office of management and budget. The entire executive branch and theagencies, most of employees are career civil servants. There is basic continuity and knowledge. Its exactly right that a new president comes in to a blank slate, but its not fully blank. One is you have these outside the white house transition resources, whether it is the white house transition process or a range of other outside , but there also is the memory that is they are in the political parties, the people that have governed before and are ready to help the new people get started area its not quite as abrupt as it might appear to be, but what is the case is that this long transition process is important to help the new people talk to existing people, sometimes go through National Security exercises, sometimes have who havewith people held various positions so they can get up to speed when they take over the presidency. Cases in there notable transitions of a reluctance of one team to handoff to another or hijinks in the handoff between on administration and another . There have been historically. In recent history those that have been mentioned like in the Clinton Administration administration into the george w. Bush administration, remember all the difficulties about the s on white house keyboards and the damage that was done to west wing offices. We have found that some of that was exaggerated. Whether it is hijinks or simply disappointed folks having to positions often to the other party, that makes it fraught and difficult. Thecally, especially since 2000 transition and after 9 11 when the National Security issue became really central for a new administration coming in, since then the transitions have tended to be civil if not friendly and done quite professionally by people on all sides. That is true across political parties. I just wanted to say very quickly, we know for example withpresident obama met president elect trump within three days after the election. He sat down with him in the white house which would be difficult now. That has been a norm until recently. What that seems to do is set a mark for the rest of the administration to undertake transition in a relatively simple fashion area fashion. Host the transition effort is different than the inaugural effort . Prof. Hult yes. The inauguration is held by a different part of gsa and they worked closely lets go to mary in orangeburg, south carolina. Little my question is a confusing. On the transition if biden hasstand won so many states why it seems like donald trump trying to block his people getting in earlier to have access to the different apartments because its not like bush and gore where it was only one state. You are talking about five states if not more. Hes not worrying about the ones to be recounts, i dont see how its possible that he shows that he can change that that amount ofh electoral votes in them. Mary, thank you. I think thats a very good question and as you probably know as well many legal experts are making the argument that they are even if some votes were pushed to the other side not enough to change the outcome of the election. Fromg said that when the Trump Administration side they may say, states are not done with mandated recounts and there is a pending court case with regards to pennsylvania. From their perspective they certainly have the legitimacy and the basis to say lets wait until the court cases and the recounts are finished. Host lets go back to the ascertainment issue, the gsa faces pressure to recognize biden as the election winner, handover keys, and formally start the transition. The gsaa decision that administrator would make, this ascertainment regardless of whatever the president or others in the Administration May say. Is this a defined number you see or defined recognition that the president ial contest is over . Prof. Hult one doesnt know, because as we pointed out before the statue is vague on the criteria that she looks at to make that judgment. Rememberingy worth that the administrator of the General Services administration is apolitical and pointy. We also is a political appointee. We know the general counsel took over on october 20 ninth and that man came from the white house counsels office. One might imagine from the outside that there is a range of political and partisan pressures on the gsa administrator. Host next is lakeland, florida. Good morning. God firstaise be to cspan. A gift to america. A place where citizens can talk. I am the coordinator of the blues herder coalition and i am organizing republicans to work with biden. I have five u. S. Senators and im giving them an antitote antidote for their black tongue disease. Many of them come from states where they have moose, romney, murkowski, and collins. Im trying to get marco rubio. I want a job in the Bided Administration to be ambassador at large to republicans. I am a lifelong republican. With for biden openly letters to the editor and speaking on freespeech tv and cspan. Have you seen any of my faxes or letters at the Transition Committee . Host i will let you go there. He says he wants a position in the Biden Administration. If you are one of those potential 4000 who wants a job or a ambassadorship now is the time to start that process to submit an application. You mentioned an fbi background check. Prof. Hult there are several processes here. Anyone who thinks they want to work in the Biden Administration i would go to the Biden Administration website and go about submitting a resume or application. I think the caller from florida in the office of Political Affairs in the white house and may be as a Party Liaison as well. Time and that makes the transition process harder. Now is the time where the apparent winner is getting deluged with resumes of people that want to join the new administration. Among the things that transition people are doing is setting up, im sure they have a computer process being set up and they are taking those resumes and have people look at them. They have a personnel operation going on at the white house and for the executive ranch and they are looking at all of those things and trying to develop things like policy priorities and trying to figure out plans for the first several weeks or months of a new administration. Ifnterested in work you are interested in working in the Biden Administration now is the time. Host if there are thousands of people waiting to come in there are thousands who will be looking for work as part of the whole transition for those folks to get them back into transitions is there assistance for that job search prof. Hult what is interesting about that is what these news reports are saying is that the Current Administration will, if not fire immediately, but certainly ask people spending their time on the job looking for another job to leave the administration. This is a difficult time. Many people are moving out of a job and they will now be on the job market looking for a related job perhaps. They have others that are anxious to join a new administration in a whole variety of positions. This is a difficult, but fun time for people looking for good people to fill important positions. Coleman will hear from in tulsa, oklahoma. Caller good morning. Bit onto visit a little the role of the media in the transition. You have mentioned a few times is feeling pressure, of biden beings the apparent winner. I want to speak to the role of the media. This is a media driven process. Thatow from the votes washington, d. C. Voted over 93 for biden. We in oklahoma voted 70 for divideso there is a big of the people who love biden and love the jobs you are talking about and the media pot of in theias role constitution is being violated because the media is supposed to be an independent protector of citizens against government corruption and abuse. The media has to cleared biden the winter, votes were still being counted, still lots of states in question, still lots of issues of corruption. I would like to comment on, isnt the media violating its constitutional prerogatives . Professor, do you have a response . Prof. Hult i think i do. Under the First Amendment guarantees a free media. Certainly there has been concern about possible differing directions on framing what the media are reporting and not reporting. What is going on here may involve something in addition. As of the caller points out there are questions about votes, allegations of voter fraud. From the gsa administrators to,pective she would like following attorney general barr, take those seriously before ascertaining. Having said that, most of the people who work for the u. S. Federal government do not work in washington dc. Many do work in states like oklahoma and kansas and other parts of the u. S. One has to be careful about linking the people that voted in the district of columbia with folks that work for the federal government. Many people who work in the district live in maryland or virginia. Having said that, one of the things that concerns the Current Administration and the biden that thisnk is transition process, which is about setting policy priorities and getting people in place to pursue those policy priorities and making sure there is a smooth exchange in a security sense from one administration to the other are concerned about how politicized this has gotten. This should be a time where the temperature starts right down, a time that looks boring, tedious, and not of great interest to a whole group of people. There is a lot of work to be done for those people in the administration. We are all focused on what is going on daytoday. Host the apparent delay in a president ial transition raising concerns with the democratic leader in the senate, chuck schumer. I wanted to play you the comments of senator schumer. Nonpartisan members of the Current Administration have refused to move forward with the formal process for the Incoming Administration. According to the Washington Post, the administrator of the General Services administration has declined to sign a letter allowing president elect joe bidens Transition Team to formally begin its work. It does not matter whether the president is happy about the results of the election. Aaceful transfer of power is hallmark, the bedrock of our democracy and it must proceed unimpeded. The gsa administrator should sign the paperwork immediately in order to allow the important work of the president ial transition to proceed. America remains in the middle of a worsening health and economic crisis and there is no excuse for the Outgoing Administration to impede the new administrations preparations to deal with these urgent challenges. There instances in past transitions where the gsa administrator has refused to certify the ascertainment of necessary for the transition . Prof. Hult not in recent elections. In the most recent elections in the to thousands and 2010, that letter has been forthcoming. Delayed in this case by the fact that the vote counts were delayed by the enormous number of absentee and early about collected around the u. S. But toads to some delay, this point its getting very close to being unprecedented with the situation by the gsa waiting for ascertainment. Host lets hear from carl on our democrats line. Caller hello, god bless america, i think there is a lot of nitpicking and backbiting. Our enemies are fishing in muddy water and she partially answered a question of mine several calls back, but i would like her to elaborate on what happened with Richard Clark and the team that was operating against Osama Bin Laden after the 93 bombing and how they got dismissed or overlooked. I love this country and i wanted to be safe and i think most americans agree with me, whether they agree with my politics. I think right now we run a risk while we are fooling around we are leaving our back door open. Thank you, thats my comment. Host professor, any comments on his 93 reference . Prof. Hult i think its a good question. As we remember, worked on the National Security council staff. Those staffers to some extent are close to permanent officials , but they served at the center of the president. A new president with a different set of priorities could certainly have chosen to replace that person or put them in a different capacity. Some of that with the National Security issues has gotten more attention i think after 9 11. We know that the congress in separate statues has talked about the need for people to be going through security clearance processes before the election. Many of the biden team have done that so as soon as possible they can go and look at intelligence briefs. That is why this gsa letter is so important. It does need to be said that the people around the president often are going to be serving at the pleasure of the president and need to be consistent with the president policy priorities. Host what prompted the passage of the president ial transition act of 1963 . Prof. Hult we forget the history but you can see these transition acts getting more attention when something happens. 1963 after the assassination of john f. Kennedy, in that case unanticipated crisis filled transition and it did capture congresss attention and they said they have to get better at how they handle the passage of power. Through the years, problems in a particular election that often lead to an amendment of the 1963 transition act. We have to take this seriously not only the existing administration but also an Incoming Administration if they are coming in in the midst of a National Emergency or crisis. Before the inauguration was moved to january, it used to be in march, the whole period between november and when they transition to a new president or things didhaos not get done. Prof. Hult its a combination. Thats the 22nd amendment which move the inauguration date from march to january 20. Had long transition period the cost that many things did not get done and an Outgoing Administration could do some mischief during the transition period. Seem932 transition did not to operate that way. Herbert hoover worked as well as he could with the incoming Franklin Roosevelt to ease some of the pressures, but theres no doubt when it comes to different policy priorities and a Different Political Party that can lead to those kinds of tensions. Host we hear next from jack in massachusetts. Caller i have a question about the 2016 election, was not donald trump made aware of the surveillance or the spying of the department of justice by the Transition Teams . Or did he find that out much later from comey. Why was he not made aware of the spying and the surveillance . Sounds to me like he wasnt. Prof. Hult i think thats an important question and let comment is not going to be very satisfactory because the comment is we dont know. Much of that information remains classified and privileged. He did not know that as mr. Trump coming into office did not know the full scale of what might be going on. We remember when he got into office there was real concern about the extent to which his incoming National Security assistant Michael Flynn was meeting with members of the as now senior counsel to the president jared kushner. Theredo underscore that can be mischief that is taking place in the runup to a new administration. Going back to 2016, i think its worth adding that mr. Obama met very quickly with President Trump and first lady melania trump. Within two or three days after the election. The chief of staff of the white house met pretty quickly with the new chief of staff reince convened an executive lunch for mr. Priebus with everyone that had worked on either side of the party as chief of staff. There was some cooperation, but on the point the caller is talking about i dont know. Oft senator Marco Rubio Florida being critical of alleged phone calls by the president elect. I remember when democrats and some in the media condemned the Trump Administration for having phone calls with peers to discuss upcoming changes in u. S. Foreignpolicy. A couple more calls here. We go to jeff in nebraska. You are on the air. That i know i believe that gore and bush i believe it was 34 days it took for three counties and one state with the hanging chads. States and a ton of stuff with these allegations going around. Certainly we can take the time to figure this out, right . Im sure if the shoe was on the other foot i would hear a whole different thing coming out of your mouth. If we have the same type of obama gave mr. R. Trump, we have problems. Whether youying want to admit it or not. Im telling you the investigation coming out this next week is going to tell us what the Obama Administration did to trump and get it host what about that transition between president obama and President Trump . In general how did that go . You mentioned they met three days after the election, was it a smooth transition in your eyes . Prof. Hult in many ways it was with a couple exceptions. It was a smooth transition that followed norms with mr. Obama and mr. Trump meeting in person, then the chief of staff commit. Its the case that National Security assistant susan rice met with Michael Flynn pretty quickly after the election and they exchanged more than 200 78 memos going back and forth to ease that transition. Having said that, what help to make the transition rock year than it needed to be is mr. Trump after the election had a Transition Team headed by former governor Chris Christie that collected all kinds of information and had information about people nominated for positions. Threw away all the binders of the nomination information. At some level started a couple steps back in terms of transition because they dismiss their own transition efforts. That transition still followed many norms that his predecessors had followed, including the norm we have not talked about, the Gold Standard of transition, which was the 2008 transition from george w. Bush to barack obama. That makes the highest marks of doing it well and quickly. Host a question from twitter, who is tasked with preserving records and documents from being destroyed by the Current Administration . Prof. Hult thats a great question. The National Archives and Records Administration is the central actor in all of this. Itre are parts of represented in all white house staff. All papers in the white house are seen as president ial papers and they are taken immediately to the National Archives and will ultimately go to a trump president ial library. Host david from elmira, new york. Caller hi, how are you. Thanks for having me on. I think its a little disturbing to me how we had seen so many people during the 2016 election cycle tell the Democratic Party that elections have consequences, that when voter turnout happens the people of america decide the election. The denial from the Republican Party to accept the results of the 2020 election is astonishing. The claims of the Trump Administration that there have been voter fraud are baseless. Every major news outlet is saying the same thing. Even fox news, and they are highly biased towards the Republican Party. Cnnould get into msnbc and and how they lean more left, i agree with that. As a democrat, i agree with that. This is a problem when you have a president who claims that its fake news. Host we are wrapping up here, we will talk about that more in our next segment. Any final thoughts on looking at this transition process in 2020 . Prof. Hult its pretty clear that we remain in a polarized environment and that creates all kinds of challenges for the transition process. Guest a board member of the white house transition project and cspans washington journal. Every day, we take your calls live on the air and we would discuss policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, Washington Post political reporter and pbs Washington Week host will join us to talk about the postelection stand up between the Trump Administration and the Biden Campaign. Leo shane will talk about issues affecting veterans and the fallout from defense secretary mark espers termination. Watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning and join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and tweets. Devices,ur mobile laptop or phone and go to cspan. Org election easy access to election 2020 results, the balance of power in congress, the latest video live and ondemand of the transition of power. Go to cspan. Org election. Cspans comcast the weekly looks at the Electoral College. With the votes still being counted, we look into challenges facing the Electoral College and potential reforms. Our guests are manager of election law reform at the Heritage Foundation and the brooklyn law score assistant professor of law. Find cspans the weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Secretary of state mike pompeo spoke about promoting democracy tuesday at an event hosted by the Ronald Reagan foundation and institute. This runs just over an hour. [applause] sec. Pompeo good morning, everyone