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Tension rises between Pentagon and Biden transition team over meetings
President-elect Joe Biden's transition team said Friday that they did not agree to a two-week break in critical transfer-of-power discussions with Pentagon officials, despite an assertion from the acting Defense Secretary that both sides had agreed to take such a "holiday pause."
Politics
President-elect Joe Biden's transition team said Friday that they did not agree to a two-week break in critical transfer-of-power discussions with Pentagon officials, despite an assertion from the acting Defense Secretary that both sides had agreed to take such a "holiday pause."
"There was no mutually agreed upon holiday break," Yohannes Abraham, executive director of the Biden transition, told reporters Friday. "In fact, we think it's important that briefings and other engagements continue during this period, as there's no time to spare."
Tensions between the Pentagon and the Biden transition spilled into public view once again on Friday after the acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, said the incoming Biden team had agreed to a two-week holiday break in previously scheduled transition talks at the Pentagon.
Miller's announcement also acknowledged that the Pentagon had postponed a series of meetings with the Biden transition team that had been scheduled for Friday, saying that those meetings would be rescheduled after the supposed holiday break.