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Officials Trump Sidelined May Get Another Chance With Biden

2020-11-27T01:29:18.461Z


It's been a difficult four years for many career officials because of the flashy political appointments of President Donald Trump.


Analyst: Biden chooses cabinet with focus on diversity 0:59

(CNN) –– It

has been four difficult years for many career government officials.

His experience was sidelined in the flashy political appointments of President Donald Trump.

Furthermore, some of his fellow professionals were marginalized, ridiculed as intruders of the so-called "deep state" and even fired.

But President-elect Joe Biden's first picks for top positions give hope to career professionals across government.

And perhaps also to some who left in the midst of contempt.

  • READ: ANALYSIS |

    Biden outlines his anti-Trump presidency

Some of the names Biden is raising right now are simply tests, meant to gauge how much fire he can expect from Republicans and from the ranks of his fellow Democrats.

Key fundraisers and sponsors will also have a say in decisions.

And government bureaucrats, however qualified they may be, are a political constituency that Biden and the Democrats have courted.

However, there is also a clear preference among Biden's advisers for career professionals, whether they were alienated or expelled during the Trump administration.

Some left voluntarily or were removed from office for lack of loyalty to Trump.

"Patriots," a Biden adviser called them.

Biden already summoned one of those alienated professionals.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield was selected as an ambassador to the United Nations.

She is a 35-year veteran who left after Trump accepted her formal resignation.

Later, she wrote about the hollowing out the president was inflicting on the State Department.

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Biden's top advisers do not list any specific individual as a potential candidate for open positions.

However, they do signal the promise of the president-elect to respect the experience and expertise of the public administration and the diplomatic corps.

These are Biden's cabinet appointments 7:33

"There is a need for a number of highly experienced high profile people where there is a shortage," Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former career ambassador, told CNN of the State Department.

“Some of them are likely to be brought in, and since most of them are quite respected people, that will likely go smoothly.

But it also depends on how these people have settled in in the meantime.

And if they have good jobs that are well paid.

Some will return, others will have left behind, "he said.

And there are enough refugees from the Trump administration that fit the job descriptions.

This is especially true in the areas of national security, law enforcement, and diplomacy.

To find examples, Biden doesn't need to look beyond the news reports of the last four years.

Sally yates

One of the first victims of the Trump purge at the top of the Justice Department hierarchy was Sally Yates.

And now she is considered one of the main contenders to be Biden's attorney general.

As an undersecretary of Justice during the Obama administration, Yates took over as acting secretary after Trump's inauguration.

He was expected to be in office until the Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions to head the Justice Department.

But it did not last that long, due to Trump's decree that banned travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Yates ordered the Justice Department attorneys not to defend the order, which angered the White House.

When Trump's term was only 10 days old, Yates was fired.

And not even through a presidential phone call, but through a personally delivered letter.

Sally Yates: “Trump has trampled the rule of law” 1:44

While Yates is a Democrat, she was not known in Washington legal circles for being especially partisan prior to her firing.

But Yates, a native of Georgia, participated in the 2020 Democratic National Convention, where she accused the president who had fired her of "trampling on the rule of law."

He also clashed with Republican senators last August to defend his role in overseeing the FBI investigation that led to the criminal charges against Michael Flynn.

Flynn briefly served as Trump's national security adviser.

During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Yates referred to Attorney General William Barr's decision to dismiss those charges earlier this year as "highly irregular."

Marie Yovanovitch

Many career foreign service officials were caught in the middle of the events that led to Trump's impeachment.

None was more prominent than Marie Yovanovtich, whose dismissal as ambassador to Ukraine in May 2019 was a central feature of the investigation into the president's wrongdoing.

Like Thomas-Greenfield, Yovanovitch spent his career in the foreign service, including appointments to the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

The credibility of his damning testimony during impeachment hearings was based on his decades of diplomatic experience and expertise.

His work in the fight against corruption was what led Trump allies to encourage the removal of Yovanovitch, through a smear campaign against him.

Trump criticizes Yovanovitch as she testified 3:08

After a fellowship at Georgetown University, Yovanovitch retired from the State Department last January.

But he delivered a tough assessment of the Trump administration in comments weeks after his retirement.

These statements could be considered a manifesto for the foreign service in the Trump era.

“To be frank: an amoral and on edge foreign policy that replaces trust with threats, fear and confusion cannot work in the long term.

Especially in our interconnected and social media savvy world, ”Yovanovitch said in Georgetown on February 12.

Alexander Vindman

Another central figure in the Trump impeachment saga was Alexander Vindman.

He is a career Army officer with a decade of experience as a foreign service officer.

Prior to that, Vindman served in combat in Iraq and received a Purple Heart after he was injured in a 2005 roadside bomb.

In 2018, he was sent to the National Security Council in the White House (along with his twin brother, Yevgeny).

Vindman's own testimony before Congress provided details about the July 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

It was the communication in which Trump asked Zelensky to help him investigate Biden.

Vindman had also informed an intelligence official of his concern about what he considered the president's "misconduct" on the call.

Witness in Trump-Zelensky call delivers testimony 2:39

The testimony put Vindman in the middle of a storm, as the president accused him of being unfair.

There were even hints from Trump's allied media that Vindman, who was born in Kiev, was a traitor to his America.

The Vindman brothers appeared to face retaliation when they were escorted out of the White House on February 7 and were immediately reassigned within the Army.

National security adviser Robert O'Brien denied the move was retaliatory.

However, Trump took to Twitter to criticize Alexander Vindman for being "very insubordinate."

He also accused him of leaking information and not respecting the chain of command.

By July, Vindman announced that he would be retiring from the military, and his lawyer pointed out that the motive was the intimidation and harassment of Trump.

White House Retaliation Concerned Over Impeachment 3:05

Bonnie glick

Before being fired on November 6, Bonnie Glick was the deputy administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

This independent agency is charged with overseeing the country's foreign aid and development funds.

Glick began her career as a foreign service official at the State Department.

She also worked for Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, as an assistant secretary in the state Department of Aging.

The Senate confirmed her as USAID Deputy Administrator, a political appointment, in January 2019.

Glick was not viewed as particularly disloyal or troublesome to Trump.

Nor did he give the administration reasons for his removal.

But taking office made things difficult for a White House that increasingly relied on interim officials from across the government.

Glick's removal came on the same day John Barsa's term as the agency's interim administrator expired, under the Federal Vacancy Reform Act.

And sources told CNN she was fired so he could stay in command.

Glick was told to resign or be fired, and sources indicated that she refused to resign.

Sources told CNN that they feared Glick's impeachment could jeopardize the ease of a transition at the agency between Trump's presidency and Biden's.

A source close to Bonnie Glick told CNN that since she is a Republican, she would have no interest in returning to USAID under the Biden administration.

This person added that before the election Glick was asked to help with the transition.

And, according to the source, she has told Biden's team that she is happy to help in an unofficial and unpaid way to ensure a smooth transition at the agency.

Glick is now a senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.

Chris Krebs

Another post-election firing occurred on November 17.

That day was the departure for Chris Krebs, the chief cybersecurity official for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

As director of the Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security at DHS, Krebs cultivated a stellar reputation.

Even with legislators from both parties.

However, he ultimately earned the ire of the president and his allies.

This precisely after Krebs and his agency began actively debunking many of the claims made by Trump and his supporters that there was widespread electoral fraud.

Trump fires election security chief 0:34

The final straw appeared to be a statement from Krebs' agency, made in conjunction with a group of election officials.

The declaration assured, definitively, that "there is no evidence that any voting system has eliminated or lost votes, has changed votes or has compromised in any way."

Trump cited the agency's statement in the tweet he posted to explain the decision to fire the 43-year-old cybersecurity expert.

Since Krebs was removed from office, he has continued the effort that got him fired.

He has also praised federal and state election officials, including his team.

He now posts to Twitter from a personal account (which quickly amassed more than 200,000 followers) and has been more forthright in denouncing misinformation.

"As a reminder, there is still no evidence that electoral systems and votes were tampered with," he tweeted after the General Services Administration (GSA) confirmed the vote.

Following the press conference by Rudy Giuliani and the president's team of attorneys, Krebs took to Twitter with unusually severe direct language.

He called the event "the most dangerous hour and 45 minutes of television in American history.

And possibly the craziest.

Krebs was expected to move forward and reach the private sector after the elections, regardless of the outcome.

He hasn't said what's next for him.

Although he did indicate that the future could include his own company when writing about his second-in-command - who resigned after Krebs was fired -: 'I'll be lucky if I ever have a business partner half as good'.

Jennifer Hansler, Alex Marquardt and Evan Perez, all from CNN, contributed to this story.

Donald TrumpJoe BidenSally Yates

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2020-11-27

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