Trump is using the transition process to punish Joe Biden

Welcome to the transition unlike any other.

Donald Trump is using a decades-old process for preparing an incoming administration to deal with policy problems large and small as a punishment tool. As he has in the past, the president is using existing federal systems and processes against Joe Biden, the president-elect.

Mr Trump has tried this in the past: he pressed Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into then-Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden over the latter’s work for an energy company there while his father was helping oust what the West saw as a corrupt prosecutor.

No law enforcement entity in either country has concluded the Bidens broke any laws, and Mr Trump was impeached by House Democrats for the ask, which included a threat to withhold millions in taxpayer-funded military aid for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia.

Now Mr Trump is at it again, using the powers of his office to block the obscure General Services Administration from unlocking the full array of typical transition authorities afforded a president-elect.

A slowly growing number of Senate Republicans are speaking out, arguing the numbers might not be there for Mr Trump to secure a second term and he should allow Mr Biden to be as prepared as possible when he takes over on 20 January.

“There's obviously parts of the transition that are in our control. We're picking people to work in the White House and to work in the Cabinet. We're building our policy plans,” incoming White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain said on Sunday. “We're having high-level meetings with leaders from around the country. And so there's parts of transition that are proceeding at pace, and, in fact, proceeding at record setting pace.

"But as you note, there are other parts that are not in our control. The president-elect [and] the vice president-elect are not getting the kind of intelligence briefings they're entitled to,” he told ABC News. “Our transition isn't getting access to agency officials to help develop our plans, and there's a lot of focus on that vaccine rollout plan that's going to be critical in the early days of a Biden presidency. We have no access to that.”

Then there are the nitty-gritty aspects of staffing a Cabinet, West Wing and federal agencies. These more methodical tasks rarely get major media coverage, but they are required by law and department-specific guidelines. If those boxes cannot be checked, the individuals being envisioned for those jobs cannot start the process of being, as they say in the federal government, “read in” on sensitive and complex details of those positions.

“We're not getting background checks. We're not in a position to get background checks on Cabinet nominees. And so there are definite impacts,” Mr Klain said.

That likely will slow the process of getting the typical first wave of an incoming president’s team confirmed by the Senate. That group almost always includes the heads of the national security agencies.

“Those impacts escalate every day, and I hope that the administrator of the GSA will do her job,” he added. “The law only requires her to find who is the apparent victor of the election, and I can't imagine there's any dispute, any dispute that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the presidential election.”

But the agency’s administrator, Emily Murphy, has yet to declare the former VP as the winner. House Democrats would like to know why.

Ms Murphy is in a standoff with the House Democrats who have been such a thorn in the side of her boss, Mr Trump. The chairwomen of the House Appropriations Committee and Oversight and Reform Committee last week sent a letter to the GSA boss requesting she testify at a Monday hearing.

"GSA hasn’t responded yet. We are assessing all options if they don’t brief us by the end of the day,” replied a House Democratic aide when asked if they had heard from Ms Murphy.

Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communication Commission under the Obama administration, has noted that 20 per cent of the 11-week transition period already has passed.

“The failure of Donald Trump to have an effective presidential transition was a self-inflicted wound of arrogance. Hobbling the Biden administration’s ability to deal with the multiple national existential crises the Trump administration leaves behind is an act of irresponsibility,” Mr Wheeler wrote for the Brookings Institution. “Under the guise of an election dispute Donald Trump is demonstrating his abuse of power is by no means over.”

A member of the Obama-Biden transition team in 2008, Mr Wheeler noted that the Republican president ordered his team, during a crisis of the economic variety, to work hand-in-glove with the incoming Obama group.

“We moved into our new offices with special welcome kits prepared by GSA. The Bush White House made it clear to all federal agencies that they were to cooperate with our efforts,” he wrote. “Transitions are important not only because they identify the new leadership of presidential appointees, but also because they do the basic staff work for the first 100 days of the new administration. To accomplish the latter, it is necessary to know more about the details inside agencies than is publicly available.”

Those Biden “landing teams” are being denied that kind of access inside each massive federal agency.

Still, the vice president-elect is picking seasoned Washington veterans for his West Wing and, reportedly, for his Cabinet-level national security positions that will be announced on Tuesday.

“He met with governors, both Democrats and Republicans, including some conservative Republican governors to talk about the urgent needs of fighting Covid,” Mr Klain said. “So he's doing his job of bringing the country together. Donald Trump's never going to change. He spent four years tearing this country apart, and it seems he's determined to spend the final days of his presidency doing the same thing.”