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Pentagon Slams Biden For Claiming That His Team Is Being Denied Access To Information

   DailyWire.com
WILMINGTON, DE - DECEMBER 29: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden shuts his eyes while delivering remarks on the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic at the Queen Theater on December 29, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president in a scaled-down ceremony due to the pandemic in Washington D.C. on January 20, 2021.
Mark Makela/Getty Images

The Department of Defense slammed Democrat Joe Biden for claiming without evidence that his team has not received all of the information that they need during the transition period, saying that U.S. officials have given Biden’s team more resources than Biden’s team initially requested.

“My team needs a clear picture of our force posture around the world and our operations to deter our enemies. We need full visibility into the budget planning underway at the Defense Department and other agencies in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch up that our adversaries may try to exploit,” Biden claimed yesterday. “But as I said from the beginning, we have encountered roadblocks from the political leadership at the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget. Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.”

Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller slammed the claims from Biden, noting that the department has given Biden’s team more access to resources than they initially requested.

“The Department of Defense has conducted 164 interviews with over 400 officials, and provided over 5,000 pages of documents – far more than initially requested by Biden’s transition team,” Miller said in a statement. “DOD’s efforts already surpass those of recent administrations with over three weeks to go and we continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and answer any and all requests for information in our purview.”

“Our DOD political and career officials have been working with the utmost professionalism to support transition activities in a compressed time schedule and they will continue to do so in a transparent and collegial manner that upholds the finest traditions of the Department,” the statement continued. “The American people expect nothing less and that is what I remain committed to.”

Biden made similar claims last week, saying, “The Defense Department won’t even brief us on many things.”

The Department of Defense noted that Biden’s claim was “patently false.” A Department of Defense official added last week: “The department will continue to provide the information and meetings necessary to ensure the continuity of government. As we’ve said, meetings will begin again in early January, and in fact we’ve begun scheduling them.”

Miller said last week that the Biden transition team had agreed to a holiday break from meetings and briefings. The Biden team claimed this was not accurate, saying, “There was no mutually agreed-upon holiday break.”

Foreign policy and national security matters are an area where Biden has been criticized, even by former Obama officials, for being wrong.

Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary for the Obama administration, said that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

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