sign an extension of the New START nuclear treaty
with Russia, meaning the size of the arsenals of the
world’s two largest nuclear powers would be un
restricted come February. And Trump was thought
to be considering troop withdrawals from interna
tional hot spots.
Still ahead could be a fnal spate of pardons. It
is common, if controversial, for outgoing Presi
dents to issue a handful as they leave office, but
none has used his pardoning power as brazenly
as Trump, according to Jack Goldsmith, a former
George W. Bush Administration lawyer: nearly 90%
of Trump’s pardons to date have gone to people
with a personal or political connection to him. “The
fact that he has just a few weeks left in power and
the fact that he and his friends and family face po
tential legal exposure leads me to think he will issue
a lot of selfserving pardons,” says Goldsmith, the
coauthor of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presi-
dency. In the past, Trump has told staffers he would
pardon them if they had to break the law to do his
bidding, former aides say, and has publicly mused
about pardoning himself. It’s not clear whether he
has the power to do that, says Goldsmith, who sees
a broad array of unilateral powers Trump might
abuse on his way out, including the disclosure of
sensitive nationalsecurity information. “Any hard
power, any power he can exercise on his own from
the Oval Office that he thinks will bring him some
advantage, he will exercise.”
Transition experts say the process has worked
in the past because outgoing Presidents have not
wanted their legacies stained by lameduck mischief.
“Biden is the likely pilot of the plane that we’re all
flying, and we all ought to want him to be ready to
go on day one,” says Max Stier, president and CEO of
the Partnership for Public Service. A President who
doesn’t think in those terms has all kinds of ways
to make trouble that will outlast his time in office.
Biden has ignored the chaos emanating from the
White House and acted the part of the incoming Pres
ident. The evening after the election was called, as
joyful Democrats across the country celebrated in the
streets, he gave a victory speech despite the lack of a
traditional concession from his opponent. On Nov. 9,
he took a briefng from the COVID19 advisory board
he had named, led by former surgeon general Vivek
Murthy, former FDA commissioner David Kessler
and Yale School of Medicine researcher Marcella
NunezSmith. The team also included Rick Bright,
who says he was dismissed from the Health and
Human Services Department for resisting Trump’s
push for hydroxychloroquine.
A transition website was posted. The Secret Ser
vice beefed up its protective protocols. Congratula
tory calls from foreign leaders—even Trumpfriendly
ones such as Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, India’s
Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan—
trickled in without the help of the State Depart
ment, whose Secretary, Mike Pompeo, joked about
a “smooth transition to a second Trump Administra
tion.” Biden gave a speech on health care in front of
a screen with an office of the presidentelect
logo and released a list of dozens of members of
“agency review teams,” a shadow version of the teams
that would get office space in Cabinet departments
during a normal transition process. Trump’s “failure
to recognize our win does not change the dynamic
of what we’re able to do,” Biden said. “We’re going
to be moving along in a consistent manner, putting
together our Administration, our White House, re
viewing who we’re going to pick for Cabinet posi
tions, and nothing’s going to stop it.”
If Biden’s campaign has been an audition for the
presidency, the transition effort is a dress rehearsal.
“You can’t ignore the noise, but you can certainly pro
ceed through it,” says Scott Mulhauser, a Democratic
consultant and former Biden aide who remains close
to the incoming President’s team. “You take on the
legal fghts and the obstruction as it comes, but you
can’t let that distract from the business of preparing
to govern. The reality is, at some point the Trump Ad
ministration will have to turn over the keys, whether
they like it or not.”
The Biden campaign began its privately funded
transition effort over the summer, creating policy
committees that prepared recommendations. Biden,
ELECTION
2020
