Firings, Transitions and Staffing, Oh My!
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 November 2020
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Yesterday, President Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, the latest in a string of dismissals. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign is trying to put a transition together, but the head of the General Services Administration will not ascertain that the transition has begun. To talk about it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Steve Vladeck, Susan Hennessey and Scott R. Anderson. They discussed the president's surprise—or not so surprising—removal of staff who have offended him, how you run a transition, what the law requires, why the GSA won't get this one started, how you staff an administration and the particular challenges Biden will face.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | Administrator Murphy at the end of the day has a formal determination to make that unlocks |
| 0:38.0 | access to money and logistical resources, but that really pales in comparison to how |
| 0:43.3 | much the transition really turns upon informal relationships and informal cooperation between |
| 0:49.9 | outgoing political agency heads and income and land in teams, through to these departments. |
| 0:56.3 | The model historically, even in the Obama to Trump transition, has been a pretty, if |
| 1:03.5 | not friendly at least, cordial and cooperative process where you hear scattershot reports |
| 1:10.2 | of people behaving badly, but the norm is cooperation. |
| 1:14.2 | I'm Benjamin Widis and this is the LawFair podcast November 10, 2020. |
| 1:21.4 | President Trump yesterday fired the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, the latest in a string |
| 1:28.3 | of dismissals. |
| 1:30.0 | Meanwhile, the Biden campaign is trying to put a transition together, but the head of |
| 1:36.0 | the General Services Administration will not ascertain that the transition has begun. |
| 1:43.4 | We got a group together to talk about the wrangling and the transition. |
| 1:49.0 | Scott Anderson, Steve Vladik, Susan Hennessy joined me in the virtual jungle studio. |
| 1:55.1 | We covered a lot of ground. |
| 1:56.7 | The president's surprise removal of staff who have offended him, or maybe not so surprise. |
| 2:04.3 | How do you run a transition? |
... |
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