Joe Biden’s team is considering legal action over the ongoing refusal to grant the president-elect a formal transition into the White House, according to reports.
Amid President Trump’s declining to concede the election, the federal agency needed to green-light his transition has also held back from declaring him the victor — a move usually made within 24 hours.
The delay by the General Services Administration (GSA) freezes the Biden team out of access to $6.3 million in federal funding, classified information and security clearances or background checks for potential cabinet nominees, Axios noted. It also prevents access to the State Department, which facilitates calls between foreign leaders, Fox News said.
“There’s a number of levers on the table and all options are certainly available,” a Biden transition official told reporters.
Legal action is “certainly a possibility,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, according to the Associated Press.
“It’s a changing situation and certainly rather fluid,” added the official, according to Axios.
Trump is not expected to formally concede but is likely to vacate the White House at the end of his term, several people around him told the AP.
A GSA spokesperson told the wire service late Monday that an “ascertainment” on the winner of the election had not yet been made.
The formal presidential transition doesn’t begin until the administrator of the federal General Services Administration ascertains the “apparent successful candidate” in the general election. Neither the Presidential Transition Act nor federal regulations specify how that determination should be made. That decision green lights the entire federal government’s moves toward preparing for a handover of power.
In 2000, the GSA determination was delayed until after the Florida recount fight was settled on Dec. 13. At the time, the administrator relied on an assessment from one of the drafters of the 1963 Presidential Transition Act that “in a close contest, the Administrator simply would not make the decision.”
That 2000 recount involved just a few hundred votes in one state that would have determined which candidate reached 270 electoral votes. Biden’s leads across Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which pushed him over the threshold to win the White House, are far more substantial — and greater than Trump’s leads in the same states in 2016.
The abbreviated transition process was identified by the 9/11 Commission Report as contributing to the nation’s unpreparedness for the crisis.
Still, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted in the Senate on Monday that “our institutions are actually built for this” kind of challenge.
“We have the system in place to consider concerns and President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” the Republican said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer countered that the Republicans’ refusal to accept the election result was “extremely dangerous, extremely poisonous to our democracy.”
“Joe Biden won the election fair and square,” Schumer said.
With Post wires