The names Biden is currently floating are just test balloons designed to gauge how much fire you can expect from Republicans and the ranks of fellow Democrats. Fundraisers and key supporters also have a say in decisions. Government bureaucrats, no matter how educated, Biden is a political constituency, and Democrats have courted.
Among Biden’s advisors, there is also a clear preference for career professionals who have been alienated or thrown out during the Trump administration. Some left or got the ax because they weren’t loyal to Trump – “patriots” – they were called by one of the leading Biden advisors.
Biden’s senior advisers do not yet talk about specific individuals as candidates for open positions, but point to his promise to respect the experience and expertise of the civil service and the diplomatic corps.
“We need a certain number of very experienced seniors where there is a shortage,” Ronald Neumann, president of the U.S. Academy of Diplomacy and former career ambassador, told CNN about the State Department. “And he’ll probably pull back some of them, and since most of them are fairly esteemed people, he’ll probably go smoothly. But it also depends on what people have created in the meantime and whether they have good jobs. They pay very well. Some people he comes back, there are those who move on. “
And there are plenty of Trump-administrative refugees — especially in national security, law enforcement, and diplomacy — who fit the description. As an example, Biden no longer has to look for news from the last four years.
Sally Yates
One of Trump’s first cleansings at the top of the Department of Justice hierarchy was Sally Yates – and now under Biden is considered the Attorney General.
The Obama administration became attorney-at-law after the inauguration of Yates Trump as deputy attorney general, and is expected to hold that role until Jeff Sessions is confirmed by the Senate as head of the Department of Justice.
While Yates is a Democrat, he was not known in Washington legal circles before his dismissal as a particular partisan. But the Georgian native appeared at the 2020 Democratic National Convention and accused the president of firing him of “tramping”[ing] Rule of law. ”
Marie Yovanovitch
Plenty of foreign service officers were arrested amid the events that led to Trump’s accountability. None was as prominent as Marie Yovanovtich, whose dismissal as Ukraine’s ambassador in May 2019 was a central factor in the investigation into the president’s violations.
Like Thomas-Greenfield, Yovanovitch spent his career in the Foreign Service, including appointments in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. The credibility of his testimony to be condemned during the indictment hearings was based on decades of diplomatic experience and expertise. It was his anti-corruption work that prompted Trump’s allies to encourage Yovanovitch’s oath with a swearing campaign against him.
After a Georgetown University scholarship, Yovanovitch retired from the State Department last January. But he hailed the administration hard weeks after his retirement, which can be seen as a manifestation of foreign service in the Trump era.
Alexander Vindman
Another central figure in the accountability saga was Alexander Vindman, a career officer with decades of experience as a foreign officer. Prior to that, Vindman had served in combat in Iraq and received a purple heart after being wounded by a road bomb in 2005. In 2018, he reported in detail to the National Security Council in the White House (along with his twin brother, Jevgenyi).
Vindman’s own pre-congressional testimony provided details of a phone call with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in July 2019, when Trump asked Zelensky to help investigate Biden. He also reported to an intelligence officer that he was concerned that he said the president had “misbehaved” during the call.
The confession drove Vindman right in the middle of a fire storm as the president accused him of infidelity. Even Trump’s media allies suspected that Kiev-born Vindman was a traitor to the United States.
By July, Vindman had announced his retirement from the Army, blaming his lawyer for intimidating and intimidating Trump.
Bonnie Glick
Glick began his career as a foreign service officer in the State Department and also worked for Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, as deputy secretary of the state’s Department of Aging. In January 2019, the Senate became Deputy Political Chief of USAID.
Glick was not considered particularly unfaithful or problematic for Trump, nor did he justify the administration to remove it. But the busyness of this role made it difficult for the White House to rely more and more on government officials.
Glick’s dismissal came the same day John Barsa expired with the agency’s executive administrator mandate under the Federal Vacancy Reform Act, and CNN sources said he was fired to remain in charge. Glick was told to resign or was fired, and sources said he refused to resign.
Sources told CNN that they feared Glick’s dismissal could jeopardize the ease of the transition between the agency’s Trump and Biden presidencies. A source close to Bonnie Glick told CNN that because she was a Republican, she would not be interested in rejoining USAID under a Biden government. This person said he had been asked to help with the transition before the election and told the Biden team that he was happy to help in an informal, unpaid capacity to ensure a smooth transition for the agency.
Glick is today a senior advisor to the Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Chris Krebs
As director of DHS’s Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, Krebs has earned a stellar reputation, including with lawmakers on both sides of the corridor. But he deserved the wrath of the president and his allies after Krebs and his agency began to actively break down many of Trump and his supporters ’allegations of widespread electoral fraud.
The final drop in the glass came when Krebs’ agency, along with a group of election officials, issued a statement definitively stating that “there is no evidence that any voting system has canceled or lost its votes, changed its votes , or would have been endangered in any way. ”
Trump quoted CISA in a statement on Twitter as explaining the decision to dismiss the 43-year-old cybersecurity expert.
Ever since Krebs was ousted, he has continued to backfire, for which he was fired, and has garnered praise from federal and state election officials, including his team. He now tweets from a personal account (which quickly gathered more than 200,000 followers) and called the disinformation more directly.
“As a reminder, there is still no evidence that electoral systems and votes have been manipulated,” he tweeted after the GSA established the vote. Following a press conference by Rudy Giuliani and the president’s group of lawyers, Krebs wrote on Twitter in an unusually harsh and direct language, calling him “the most dangerous 1 hour 45-minute television in American history and probably the craziest.”
Krebs was expected to move into the private sector after the election, regardless of the outcome of the election. He didn’t say what was next for him, but indicated he could include his own business, writing about his former deputy – who resigned after Krebs was fired – “I’ll be lucky to ever have half such a good business.”
