Trump staff shake-up slows transition to near halt

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray Tuesday (Nov 15) with the abrupt resignation of Mr Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government.

In a statement Tuesday, Mr Rogers, a former congressman from Michigan who led the House Intelligence Committee, said that he was “proud of the team that we assembled at Trump for America to produce meaningful policy, personnel, and agency action guidance on the complex national security challenges facing our great country,” and that he was “pleased to hand off our work” to a new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

Mr Pence took the helm of the effort Friday after Mr Trump removed Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion.

Now the effort is frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Barack Obama’s aides on the handover.

An aide to Mr Trump’s transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of the document was being altered and updated, and that it would likely be signed later Tuesday.

The turmoil at the highest levels of his staff upended months of planning and preparation for a process that many describe as drinking from a fire hose even in the most orderly of circumstances — a period of about 70 days between election and inauguration Jan 20.

During that time, the president-elect must assemble a team to take the reins of the massive federal bureaucracy and recruit, vet and hire 4,000 political appointees to help him run it.

Teams throughout the federal government and at the White House that have prepared briefing materials and status reports for the incoming president’s team are on standby, waiting to begin passing the information to their counterparts on Mr Trump’s staff. 

Still, the slow and uncertain start to what is normally a rapid and meticulously planned transfer of power could have profound implications for Mr Trump’s nascent administration, challenging the efforts of the president-elect to gain control of the federal bureaucracy and begin building a staff fully briefed on what he will face in the Oval Office on Day 1.

The chaos caught the attention of some senior Republicans who criticised Mr Trump during his campaign but said after he won that they would not necessarily rule out joining his administration or advising him.

Mr Eliot Cohen, a former State Department official, said on Twitter that after having spoken to Mr Trump’s team, he had “changed my recommendation: stay away. They’re angry, arrogant, screaming ‘you LOST!’ Will be ugly.”

Mr Obama has repeatedly said that his priority is to ensure a smooth and professional transition, a process for which his team and aides to Mr Trump, as well Mrs Hillary Clinton’s staff members, had been quietly preparing for several months.

Mr Christie, who until Friday served as Mr Trump’s transition chief, signed a memorandum of understanding on Election Day to put the process into motion as soon as the outcome was determined.

But in response to a series of questions about whether the Obama administration had begun to brief Mr Trump’s team, White House officials said late Monday that the president-elect’s decision to abruptly replace Mr Christie on Friday with Mr Pence had, for the time being, frozen the process.

By law, the document must be signed by the chairman of the transition operation, and Mr Pence has yet to do so.

Among other things, the paperwork serves as a mutual nondisclosure agreement for both sides, ensuring that members of the president-elect’s team do not divulge sensitive information about the inner workings of the government that they learn during the transition period, and that the president’s aides do not reveal anything they may discover about the incoming administration’s plans.

Brandi Hoffine, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr Obama’s team was working with Mr Pence to sign the document, a standard agreement whose wording is largely governed by statute. “We look forward to completing that work so that we can provide the necessary access to personnel and resources to get the president-elect’s team up to speed and deliver on President Obama’s directive for a smooth transition,” Ms. Hoffine said.

The turmoil at the highest levels of his staff upended months of planning and preparation for a process that many describe as drinking from a fire hose even in the most orderly of circumstances — a period of about 70 days between the election and the inauguration on Jan 20. During that time, the president-elect must assemble a team to take the reins of the massive federal bureaucracy and recruit, vet and hire 4,000 political appointees to help him run it.

Teams throughout the federal government and at the White House that have prepared briefing materials and status reports for the incoming president’s team are on standby, waiting to begin passing the information to their counterparts on Mr Trump’s staff. THE NEW YORK TIMES