State Department Blocking Access to Correspondence from Foreign Leaders for the President-elect

  • The U.S. State Department has been preventing President-elect Joe Biden from accessing messages from foreign leaders, highlighting the Trump Administration's blatant unwillingness to facilitate the transition process.
Updated 13 Nov, 2020

The U.S. State Department has been preventing President-elect Joe Biden from accessing messages from foreign leaders, highlighting the Trump Administration's blatant unwillingness to facilitate the transition process.

As reported by CNN, Biden has been unable to receive dozens of official messages from world leaders through the State Department, which supports all formal communication for the Office of the President-elect; which is a blatant violation of established norms, as President Trump refuses to concede.

President-elect Biden has communicated with several world leaders since his historic electoral victory, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; albeit without the logistical and diplomatic support from the State Department, which has been consistently impeding the transition process.

It has also been reported that in an effort to bypass this roadblock, foreign leaders have reached out to former Obama-era diplomats to get in touch with President-elect Biden's team; once it was inferred that the State Department was not facilitating the new Administration.

President Trump has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Biden's victory, pursuing legal action in key swing states, and peddling a narrative that perpetuates issues pertaining to voter fraud and deliberate miscounting. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when inquired about the transitional process, stated that "there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration", adding more fuel to the fire as to whether the Administration will be cooperative in the process.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has refused to share Presidential intelligence briefings with Biden, while the Administrator of the General Services Administration has refused to issue the President-elect a letter of "ascertainment" which would allow the transfer of power to begin - thereby posing multiple roadblocks for the incoming Biden Administration.

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