By Hal Brown
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I am not sure about how this would exactly work but it seems to me that the Biden team must have a contingency plan for Trump refusing to the bitter end to allow the normal transition from an outgoing to an incoming administration to take place. I was a psychology and a social work major and never even had a political science or government course. This is what I think will happen.
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The moment President Biden and Vice President Harris are sworn in they have the power of their offices. They can and no doubt will fire all of Trump's political appointments and have people preselected to replace them immediately.
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I wouldn't be surprised if at this moment those already selected are meeting with their predecessors from the Obama administration for an in-depth tutorial of what the job entails, what obstacles to expect, and how to remedy the damage four years of Trump has done.
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All of the civil service employees from the Departments Defense, Justice, and State to the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Treasury, Commerce and so on must follow their orders.
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The military itself must follow legal orders from the chain of command.
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The new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will meet with the top civil service people in all the intelligence agencies and if they are still there they will. meet with FBI Director Wray and CIA Director Haspel.
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I can see them also meeting with the tweet fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
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There probably are others fired out of spite by Trump at lower levels who will out of patriotism help with the transition.
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Thank goodness there will be an existing civil service hierarchy of longtime careerists ready to temporarily assume leadership or advisory roles without fear of bosses who were political appointments with no qualifications. They would be in the position to guide decision making and they would follow the directions of the people Biden puts in charge.
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The Biden team will have an agenda ready to go for each and every department.
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Executive orders will be signed and to the extent these presidential degrees have the power of law they must be followed.
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This will be an extraordinary task to accomplish without the customary transition cooperation. However I am sure it will be done expeditiously.
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UPDATE: FROM A NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT ROSA BROOKS ON MSNBC Many of the people on Biden’s transition team already not only have contacts in the various agencies, but they also have high security clearances because of their current jobs in the private sector or for other reasons.
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I am certainly not an expert, but this is how I see it.