Tag Archives: Chief of Staff

Biden moves forward, names longtime adviser chief of staff

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday named longtime adviser Ron Klain as his White House chief of staff, his first major appointment, as he builds his administration regardless of whether President Donald Trump accepts the election results.

Klain, 59, served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president under President Barack Obama and had been widely expected to be named to the post.

He also has experience battling a public health crisis, as he worked as Obama’s “Ebola Czar” in 2014 during an outbreak of that virus in Africa. A fierce critic of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Klain is expected to be a key figure in Biden’s response to the health crisis.

As Biden moved toward assuming office, Trump’s campaign filed a federal lawsuit in Michigan as it continued its long-shot legal strategy of trying to overturn the election results in key states.

All week, Biden has paid little public attention to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, instead focusing on transition issues as he prepares to be sworn in on Jan. 20.

Biden clinched victory last Saturday as he won a series of battleground states to exceed the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines who wins the presidency. Biden also was winning the national popular vote by more than 5 million ballots with a few states still counting votes.

Trump has refused to concede, and his administration has resisted cooperating with transition efforts.

Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of aiming to undermine public trust in the U.S. electoral system and delegitimize Biden’s victory through unproven and anecdotal claims of voter fraud as Trump, the first U.S. president to lose a re-election bid since 1992, desperately tries to cling to power.

In Klain, Biden brings in a trusted and experienced operative who also served as Vice President Al Gore’s top aide during Bill Clinton’s administration. He served as an outside adviser to Biden during the campaign and the two have a relationship dating back to Biden’s years as a U.S. senator from Delaware.

As Biden’s chief of staff during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Klain helped oversee the implementation of the $787 billion Recovery Act that boosted the cratering economy.

In 2014, he earned plaudits from public health experts as the government’s Ebola response coordinator.

“Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014,” Biden said in a statement.

“His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff.”

NO SURRENDER

Trump’s new lawsuit in Michigan appeared unlikely to alter the outcome in a state he won in 2016 but was losing by roughly 148,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points, in unofficial Michigan vote totals, according to Edison Research.

The lawsuit made allegations of voting misconduct, with the focus on the Democratic stronghold of Wayne County, which includes Detroit. Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, said the Trump campaign was promoting false claims to erode public confidence in the election.

“It does not change the truth: Michigan’s elections were conducted fairly, securely, transparently, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people,” Rollow said in a statement.

Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a hand recount of all ballots cast in the state’s 159 counties. He said it was expected to begin this week and would be finished in time to certify the results by a Nov. 20 deadline.

Biden became the election winner even without Georgia factored in. He held a lead of just over 14,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage point, in Georgia, a Southern state that Democrats have not carried in a presidential election since 1992.

Judges have tossed out several Trump lawsuits, and legal experts say the litigation has scant chance of changing the outcome.

The lawsuits are part of a broader effort to find evidence to back up Trump’s fraud allegations and forge a case that could end up at the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices appointed by him.

One Republican strategist with ties to the White House said the legal maneuvers and push for recounts were aimed at coming up with support for Trump’s claims.

The strategist, like many others close to the effort, acknowledged the Trump campaign faced an uphill struggle.

“They’re looking at throwing up a hundred Hail Marys,” he said, using a football term referring to a desperation pass at the end of a game.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel, Andy Sullivan, Tim Reid, Noeleen Walder, Jarrett Renshaw, Steve Holland, Susan Heavey, Julia Harte, Jan Wolfe, Jason Lange and Tim Ahmann; Writing by Daniel Trotta, Paul Simao and James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Peter Cooney)

Venezuela detains top aide to Guaido in move U.S. calls ‘big mistake’

Personal belongings are seen on the floor at the residence of Roberto Marrero, chief of staff to opposition leader Juan Guaido, after he was detained by Venezuelan intelligence agents, according to legislators, in Caracas, Venezuela March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

By Vivian Sequera and Angus Berwick

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Thursday intelligence agents had detained his chief of staff during a pre-dawn raid, a move by President Nicolas Maduro that the Trump administration said would “not go unanswered.”

Guaido invoked the constitution in January to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro’s 2018 re-election a fraud. He has been recognized by the United States and dozens of other Western nations as the country’s legitimate leader.

Maduro, who has overseen a dramatic collapse of the OPEC nation’s economy, has called Guaido a puppet of the United States and said he should “face justice,” but has not explicitly ordered his arrest.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, called for the immediate release of Roberto Marrero. “Maduro has made another big mistake,” Bolton said on Twitter.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said earlier on Thursday that “we will hold accountable those involved.”

Top U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Maduro not to touch Guaido and his inner circle, but it is unclear what more they can do.

They have threatened ever harsher sanctions intended to further isolate Maduro and cut off his administration’s sources of revenue, but the humanitarian and political costs of further blanket measures could be high. Millions of Venezuelans are already suffering shortages of food and medicine.

Guaido said the raids by agents from the SEBIN intelligence service on the residences of Marrero and another opposition legislator, Sergio Vergara, showed Maduro’s “weakness” and that attempts to intimidate him would not derail the opposition campaign.

“As they cannot take the interim president prisoner, so they seek out people closest to him, threaten relatives, carry out kidnappings,” Guaido told a news conference.

Marrero recorded a voice message as SEBIN agents were trying to enter his home in Caracas’ upscale Las Mercedes neighborhood, which Guaido’s press team forwarded to reporters.

“I am in my house and the SEBIN is here. Unfortunately, they have come for me. Keep up the fight, don’t stop and look after (Guaido),” Marrero said.

Vergara, Marrero’s neighbor, said some 40 armed SEBIN agents forced their way into their homes and spent three hours inside. The SEBIN left with Marrero and Vergara’s driver, the legislator said in a video posted on his Twitter account.

Guaido said that Marrero had told Vergara that agents had planted two rifles and a grenade in his house.

Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“HELD TO ACCOUNT”

Since January, Venezuelan authorities have arrested over 1,000 people in connection with anti-government demonstrations, most of them arbitrarily, rights groups say.

United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday that Venezuelan security forces, backed by pro-government militias, have quashed peaceful protests with excessive use of force, killings and torture.

On Thursday, the UN human rights office tweeted its concern over Marrero’s detention and urged the government to respect due process and reveal his whereabouts. The Lima Group regional bloc also denounced Marrero’s arrest and said Maduro was responsible for his safety.

Maduro has said his government is the victim of an “economic war” led by his political adversaries and blames U.S. financial and oil sector sanctions for the country’s situation.

Venezuela is reeling from annual inflation topping 2 million percent, which has fueled malnutrition and preventable disease and spurred an exodus of more than 3 million citizens since 2015.

While Trump has said all options remain open, there appears to be little support in Washington or regional Latin American capitals for any military intervention.

Guaido traveled around South America in February to drum up diplomatic support, defying a travel ban imposed by the pro-government Supreme Court.

He later entered the country via Venezuela’s principal airport without being detained by immigration officials.

Venezuela’s chief state prosecutor, Tarek Saab, last week asked the Supreme Court to open an investigation into Guaido for alleged involvement in the “sabotage” of the country’s electrical network, after the longest nationwide power blackout in decades.

The opposition, along with electrical experts, said the power outage was due to the government’s incompetence and years without maintenance.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Vivian Sequera; Additional reporting by Corina Pons in Caracas, Susan Heavey in Washington, and Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Bernadette Baum and Rosalba O’Brien)

Trump praises new chief of staff for avoiding controversy

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with John Kelly after he was sworn in as White House Chief of Staff in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2017.

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump swore in his new chief of staff John Kelly on Monday, a retired Marine Corps general who he praised for averting controversy during his tenure overseeing border security issues at the Department of Homeland Security.

Kelly is expected to bring a more disciplined approach to running Trump’s White House. He replaced Reince Priebus, who failed to mesh with the president’s freewheeling and untraditional management style and grappled with infighting during his six months in the job.

Trump praised Kelly for his work at the DHS, crediting him with reducing the number of people illegally crossing the southern U.S. border, and implementing a travel ban for refugees and people from a group of Muslim majority countries.

“He will do a spectacular job, I have no doubt, as chief of staff,” the Republican president said in brief remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, surrounded by his senior advisers, after Kelly was sworn in.

“With a very controversial situation, there’s been very little controversy, which is really amazing by itself,” Trump said.

Trump announced last Friday that Kelly would replace Priebus, at the end of a particularly chaotic week that saw his first legislative effort – healthcare reform – fail in Congress.

The last week heightened concerns in Trump’s party that the distractions and West Wing dysfunction would derail other legislative priorities, including tax reform and debt ceiling negotiations.

Trump pointed to the buoyant stock market and low unemployment rate as signs that his White House was working well. “No WH chaos!” he tweeted on Monday.

Asked by reporters what Kelly would do differently, Trump brushed aside concerns.

“We’re doing very well, we have a tremendous base, we have a tremendous group of support. The country is optimistic, and I think the general will just add to it,” he said.

 

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Frances Kerry)