"Transition process formally under way. GSA action allows briefings, funding for Biden team." by U-T News Services, San Diego Union-Tribune 11/21/2020
NOTE: This is copied from the e-newspaper, therefore no link to article.
President Donald Trump’s government on Monday authorized president-elect Joe Biden to begin a formal transition process after Michigan certified Biden as its winner, a strong sign that the President’s last-ditch bid to overturn the results of the election was coming to an end.
Trump did not concede, and vowed to persist with efforts to change the vote. But the President said on Twitter on Monday night that he accepted the decision by Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration [GSA], to allow a transition to proceed.
In his tweet, Trump said that he had told his officials to begin “initial protocols” involving the handoff to Biden “in the best interest of our country.”
Murphy’s designation of Biden as the apparent victor provides the incoming administration with federal funds and resources and clears the way for the president-elect’s advisers to coordinate with Trump administration officials.
The decision from Murphy came after several additional senior Republican lawmakers, as well as leading figures from business and world affairs, denounced the delay in allowing the peaceful transfer of power to begin, a holdup that Biden and his top aides said was threatening national security and the ability of the incoming administration to effectively plan for combating the coronavirus pandemic.
And it followed a key court decision in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Trump campaign and the President’s Republican allies, stating that roughly 8,000 ballots with signature or date irregularities must be counted.
In Michigan, the statewide canvassing board, with two Republicans and two Democrats, voted, 3-0, to approve the results, with one Republican abstaining. It officially delivered to Biden a key battleground that Trump had wrested away from Democrats four years ago, and rebuffed the President’s legal and political efforts to overturn the results.
By Monday evening, as Biden moved ahead with plans to fill out his Cabinet, broad sectors of the nation had delivered a blunt message to the President: His campaign to stay in the White House was nearing the end.
Murphy said she made her decision Monday because of “recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results,” most likely referring to the certification of votes by election officials in Michigan and a nearly unbroken string of court decisions that have rejected Trump’s challenges in several states.
In conversations earlier in the day with top aides — including Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff; Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel; and Jay Sekulow, the President’s personal lawyer — Trump was told that the transition needed to begin. He did not need to say the word “concede,” they told him, according to multiple people briefed on the discussions. But they emphasized that in the United States, transitions are hugely important.
Some of the advisers drafted a statement for the President to issue. But Trump continued to solicit opinions from associates, including Rudy Giuliani, who told him there were still legal avenues to pursue, the people briefed on the discussions said.
In the end, Trump did not put out a statement, but aides said the tone of the proposed statement was similar to his tweets in the evening, in which he appeared to take credit for Murphy’s decision to allow the transition to a new administration to begin.
“Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!” he wrote. “Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”
In a letter to Biden, Murphy rebutted Trump’s assertion that he had directed her to make the decision, saying that “I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts.” She said she was “never directly or indirectly pressured by any executive branch official — including those who work at the White House or the GSA.”
“I do not think that an agency charged with improving federal procurement and property management should place itself above the constitutionally-based election process,” she wrote, defending her delay by saying that she did not want to get ahead of the constitutional process of counting votes and picking a President.
Murphy said she had received threats online, by phone, and by mail “directed at my safety, my family, my staff, and even my pets in an effort to coerce me into making this determination prematurely.”
“Even in the face of thousands of threats, I always remained committed to upholding the law,” the letter said.
She did not describe Biden as the “president-elect” in her letter, even as she said the transition could begin.
One associate with knowledge of Murphy’s thinking said that she always anticipated signing off on the transition but that she needed a defensible rationale to do so in the absence of a concession from Trump; the pro-Biden developments in Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as in Georgia, provided a clear justification for moving ahead.
That decision was part of a cascade of events over the last several days that appeared to signal the end of Trump’s attempts to resist the will of the voters.
Large counties in Pennsylvania were formalizing Biden’s victory in the state. And in a major break with the President, General Motors announced it would no longer back the administration’s efforts to nullify California’s fuel economy rules.
On Capitol Hill, most of Trump’s Republican allies had stood by his side for the past two weeks as he [Trump] tried to overturn the vote. But on Monday, some of the Senate’s most senior Republicans sharply urged Murphy to allow the transition to proceed.
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring, issued his second call in recent days for a prompt transition.
“Since it seems apparent that Joe Biden will be the president-elect, my hope is that President Trump will take pride in his considerable accomplishments, put the country first and have a prompt and orderly transition to help the new administration succeed,” said Alexander, a close friend of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) the Senate majority leader. “When you are in public life, people remember the last thing you do.”
Earlier in the day, Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, both Republicans, issued statements breaking from Trump and calling for Biden to begin receiving coronavirus and national security briefings.
“At some point, the 2020 election must end,” Capito said.
The pressure on Trump extended beyond the political sphere. More than 100 business leaders sent a letter to the administration on Monday asking it to facilitate a transition, and a group of Republican national security experts implored Republican members of Congress to demand that Trump concede.
One of the President’s staunchest supporters, Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity firm Blackstone, did not sign the business leaders’ letter but said in a statement that “the outcome is very certain today and the country should move on.”
The New York Times and The Washington Post contributed to this report.
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