Category: Joe Biden

Biden taps intelligence veteran for new White House cybersecurity role

Anne Neuberger, the NSA’s director of cybersecurity, will join Biden’s National Security Council.

President-elect Joe Biden plans to pluck a career intelligence official from the National Security Agency to serve in a newly created cybersecurity role on his National Security Council.

Anne Neuberger, who joined the NSA more than a decade ago and has been serving as the agency’s director of cybersecurity since 2019, will be named deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity in the incoming NSC, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Neuberger’s hiring indicates that the Biden White House intends to reelevate cybersecurity as a key national security priority, after President Donald Trump eliminated the role of cybersecurity coordinator in 2018. Continue reading.

Biden to pick Merrick Garland for attorney general

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President-elect Joe Biden will announce Judge Merrick Garland to be attorney general on Thursday, seeking to place in the nation’s top law enforcement job a respected federal appeals judge whose Supreme Court nomination Republicans blocked five years ago, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: News of the selection, first reported by Politico, came just hours after the nation learned that Democrats would likely win both Senate runoffs in Georgia and take control of the Senate, making it harder for Republicans to block nominations.

  • That applies not just the attorney general nominee himself, but also whomever Biden nominates to replace Garland as an appellant judge in a crucial circuit. Continue reading.

Pence declares Biden winner of the presidential election after Congress finally counts electoral votes

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Vice President Pence declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election at the end of a violent and deadly day at the Capitol. Pence also announced that Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) had won the vice presidency, after the Senate and House rejected Trump loyalists’ challenges to Biden’s win in Pennsylvania and Congress finally counted the electoral votes.

Shortly thereafter, President Trump — who had defiantly told supporters at a rally that he would “never concede” — said in a statement that “there will be an orderly transition on January 20th.” Continue reading.

Biden condemns riots at Capitol, calls on Trump to demand end to siege

President-elect Joe Biden offered a scathing rebuke of the hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who continued to storm the U.S. Capitol Complex and disrupted the official declaration of the 2020 election results earlier on Wednesday.

Biden, who will become the U.S. president on Jan. 20, castigated the rioters and called upon law enforcement to quell violence in Washington.

“At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times,” the president-elect said from Wilmington, Delaware. “Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect the true America, do not represent who we are.” Continue reading.

‘You’ve Created the Controversy. You’re the Arsonist Here’: Chuck Todd Rips Trump Sycophant Senator

“How about the moon landing? Are you going to hold hearings on that?” the host snarked

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd pulled no punches during an interview with staunch Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Sunday morning.

After an explainer of Johnson’s and other officeholders’ planned attempt to subvert democracyby opposing the certification of the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday, the host laid into the Trump sycophant for pretending to try to fix a problem that the president and lawmakers, like Johnson, duped supporters into believing in the first place.

“You made an allegation that there was widespread fraud. You have failed to offer specific evidence of that widespread fraud. But you’re demanding an investigation on the grounds that there are allegations of widespread fraud,” the host said. Continue reading.

All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory

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Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld are the 10 living former U.S. secretaries of defense.

As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party.

American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy. With one singular and tragic exception that cost the lives of more Americans than all of our other wars combined, the United States has had an unbroken record of such transitions since 1789, including in times of partisan strife, war, epidemics and economic depression. This year should be no exception.

Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived. Continue reading.

Ex-GOP Speaker Ryan denounces effort to challenge Electoral College results

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Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Sunday blasted Congressional Republicans’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory strike at the foundation of our republic. It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Ryan said in a statement.

“The Trump campaign had ample opportunity to challenge election results, and those efforts failed from lack of evidence,” the statement continues. “The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed. The Department of Justice, too, found no basis for overturning the result. If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate.” Continue reading.

Fox News host rips ‘outrageous’ GOP Electoral College plot: ‘It’s a very dangerous precedent’

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Fox News host Jedidiah Bila on Sunday criticized Republicans who want to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory by officially objecting to the results of the Electoral College.

“I actually find it really outrageous,” Bila explained to Fox News host Howard Kurtz. “And the reason is that if you look at what’s gone on here, I think the media has actually been pretty fair, particularly the news divisions.”

“This has gone through the courts,” she continued. “Sixty cases have been brought to the courts, oftentimes widespread voter fraud has not even been alleged in court because there simply isn’t evidence to support that. If you look at the evidence that has been shown, it does not support that.” Continue reading.

‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

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President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate. Continue reading.

George Conway only needed 11 words to sum up Pence’s embrace of GOP scheme to overturn the election

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More Republicans embraced the scheme by far-right supporters of Donald Trump to ignore the results of the 2020 election.

Trump lost the Electoral College and popular vote to President-elect Joe Biden, but some Republicans have joined the president in refusing to accept the fact that voter reject the GOP presidential ticket.

On Saturday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and ten additional GOP senators received harsh criticism after announcing they would go along with the effort to reject the will of the voters. Continue reading.