Biden wants the Senate to walk and chew gum

Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history.

House Democrats are barreling ahead with a vote to impeach President DONALD TRUMP an unprecedented second time. That’s left President-elect JOE BIDEN and Senate Democrats searching for ways to hold an impeachment trial while simultaneously moving forward with Biden’s ambitious 100-day agenda to rein in a deadly pandemic, jumpstart a struggling economy and more.

The latest proposal: to “bifurcate” the Senate impeachment trial, as Biden suggested Monday.

“Can we go half day on dealing with impeachment, and half day getting my people nominated and confirmed in the Senate as well as moving on the package?” Biden wondered aloud as he talked with reporters in Wilmington, Del. after receiving his second Covid-19 vaccine shot.

Asked whether such an approach is possible, Biden replied, “I haven’t gotten an answer from the parliamentarian yet.”

As it turns out, there’s no need to ring up the Senate parliamentarian. Our colleague, Senate reporter ANDREW DESIDERIO, points out that this is exactly what the Senate did during Trump’s first impeachment trial — convening for normal operations each morning, and then morphing into an impeachment court beginning at 1 p.m.

Ultimately, it’s up to the Senate majority to determine scheduling questions and other parameters. Recall — it was almost exactly one year ago that Majority Leader MITCH McCONNELL jammed through the ground rules for Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on a party-line vote, rejecting “Democratic efforts to subpoena witnesses and documents,” as BURGESS EVERETT and MARIANNE LEVINE wrote at the time.

So, per Andrew, “there isn’t really a question of whether this is an option; rather, it’s how CHUCK SCHUMER sets this up procedurally, once he’s majority leader.”

Schumer himself affirmed in an interview Monday with the Buffalo News that he was eyeing just such an approach: “We’re going to have to do several things at once but we got to move the agenda as well. Yes, we’ve got to do both.”

Marianne tells us that Schumer is also exploring using emergency powers to bring the Senate back into session to begin a trial before Biden’s inauguration, according to a senior Democratic aide. But that would require buy-in from McConnell, who sent out a memo last week to his caucus indicating a trial wouldn’t occur until at least Jan. 19, when the Senate is scheduled to come back to Washington.

Bottom line: Looks like Democrats are going to have to forge ahead on their impeachment plans on their own.

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Where's Joe

At Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del., where he got his second dose of the Covid vaccine.

Where's Kamala

Met with economic advisers, according to the transition.

Presidential Trivia

With the Center for Presidential Transition

Biden is planning to be sworn in next week before the West Front of the Capitol, a tradition that began with which president: RICHARD NIXON, RONALD REAGAN, JIMMY CARTER or JOHN F. KENNEDY?

(Read to the end for the answer)

Pro Exclusive

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES TO HOLD AUSTIN HEARING AFTER INAUGURATION — The House Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Lloyd Austin to be the Biden administration’s defense secretary a day after the president-elect’s swearing in, our CONNOR O’BRIEN reports.

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FILLING THE RANKS

WHAT’S NEXT AT DOJ — Now that Biden has announced MERRICK GARLAND as his pick for attorney general, the focus is shifting to the assistant attorney general roles. LEAH NYLEN sends along this scuttlebutt on potential selections for the assistant attorney general for the department’s antitrust division:

The leading candidate is thought to be TERRELL McSWEENY, a longtime Biden aide and former FTC commissioner. The question is whether McSweeny wants the job or a different one, such as a White House policy role. At the FTC and in other previous jobs, she has been more involved in privacy and consumer protection issues than antitrust, including working behind the scenes on the Obama administration’s efforts to develop comprehensive privacy legislation.

Another name Leah has been hearing is SUSAN DAVIES, a former deputy White House counsel under President BARACK OBAMA and former Senate Judiciary Committee general counsel. Davies and Garland worked together at DOJ under Clinton and she helped shepherd his Supreme Court nomination while at the White House counsel’s office. She has some antitrust experience — worked in the antitrust division before moving onto other areas at DOJ — but mostly does government investigation/regulatory investigations in private practice.

There’s also a dark horse candidate that progressives really like: former Paul Weiss partner JONATHAN KANTER, who left in the fall to open his own shop. Kanter represents opponents of Google, Apple and Amazon, and is the intellectual powerhouse behind many of the theories in the Google antitrust cases now filed.

KERRY SETS UP HIS CLIMATE TEAM: JOHN KERRY, the president-elect’s special climate envoy, is filling out his staff, made up mostly of Obama administration alumni and Foggy Bottom personnel, ZACK COLMAN reports. SUE BINIAZ, a longtime career State Department climate official, already has accepted a job to work on Kerry’s staff, and JONATHAN PERSHING, who was the State Department special climate envoy under Obama, is also in discussions for a top role with Kerry’s team.

Kerry is also considering a deputy to coordinate activities at the State Department, while he oversees bigger-picture tasks, Zack reports.

A DIPLOMAT AT CIA: Biden has turned to former Ambassador WILLIAM BURNS to be his CIA director, QUINT FORGEY and NATASHA BERTRAND report. Across his 33-year career in U.S. foreign policy, Burns has served in various senior capacities at the State Department under several administrations, most recently as former President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of State.

Burns, an early contender to become Biden’s secretary of State, beat out other top candidates for CIA director including DAVID COHEN, an attorney who served as the agency’s deputy director from 2015-2017. As we reported last week, the CIA director job will not be a Cabinet-level position, but it will require Senate confirmation.


Advise and Consent

MORE FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES — Three more of Biden’s senior personnel picks — LLOYD AUSTIN, Biden’s pick for Defense secretary; TOM VILSACK, whom Biden will nominate to be Agriculture secretary; and WALLY ADEYEMO, Biden’s choice for deputy Treasury secretary — have filed their financial disclosures.

Vilsack’s filing is the most interesting. His sources of income over the past two years include:

— $833,000 as head of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, plus a housing allowance worth about $30,000

— $75,000 as a senior adviser to Colorado State University’s chancellor

— About $145,000 serving as a court-appointed monitor for Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy

— $92,500 in political consulting fees

— $36,000 in Iowa state retirement benefits

— a $10,000 honorarium for speaking in November to the private equity firm Paine Schwartz Partners

— Between $50,001 and $100,000 renting out farmland he owns in Davis County, Iowa

Vilsack also won $150,000 in Iowa’s lottery last year, bringing his total income over the past two years to more than $1.4 million. Not bad.

WHY PROGRESSIVES AREN’T YELLIN’ ABOUT THOSE SPEECHES: Democrats aren’t especially troubled by the revelation that JANET YELLEN, Biden’s Treasury secretary pick, has made millions giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other big companies, VICTORIA GUIDA reports.

Even JEFF HAUSER of the Revolving Door Project, who’s often a thorn in Biden’s side on such issues, said he’s not too bothered by it. If “Yellen gave war story speeches for big cash, it is unfortunate given her new role, but not a huge deal,” Hauser said, though he added that she should still make all her remarks public.

“No one thought they were buying access to a future regulator, and war stories without secrets are very different than selling strategic advice based on public service,” he said.

Agenda Setting

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE? ADAM CANCRYN and TYLER PAGER report that Biden is not happy with his Covid-19 advisers, amid rising concerns that his administration will fall short of its promise of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days.

Asked about the pledge Monday afternoon, Biden said he would be holding a Zoom call with his Covid team later in the afternoon and planned to provide more details on how he plans to get the “entire COVID operation up and running” in a Thursday announcement.

This could help: The Trump administration this week will give Biden transition officials their first direct access to certain regular meetings tied to the government’s coronavirus vaccine development effort, Operation Warp Speed, a senior administration official told Adam on Monday.

PROGRESSIVE PRESSURE RISES: Democratic control of the Senate will help Biden move his agenda through Congress — but Democrats are still pressing him to issue a blitz of executive orders, too, LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ and HOLLY OTTERBEIN report.

Sen. BRIAN SCHATZ (D-Hawaii) said he’s “pushing” the incoming administration “to do as much as possible in the executive order space,” arguing that utilizing that power “creates a little bit of leverage” for legislating.

What We're Reading

Biden team eyes Nellie Liang, Robert Jackson for economic roles (Bloomberg News)

What Doug Emhoff will do once he becomes second gentleman (The Washington Post)

The Oppo Book

It turns out that WILLIAM BURNS, Biden’s pick to lead the CIA, knows how to wield a pen. The Oxford historian TIMOTHY GARTON ASH has expressed admiration for Burns’ prose, which he was able to read due to the WikiLeaks’ release of U.S. diplomatic cables.

Burns “contributed from Russia a highly entertaining account — almost worthy of EVELYN WAUGH — of a wild Dagestani wedding attended by the gangsterish president of Chechnya, who danced clumsily ‘with his gold-plated automatic stuck down the back of his jeans,’” Garton Ash wrote a decade ago. Will this apparent talent help Burns, a lifelong diplomat, rule Langley? We couldn’t possibly comment — but at the very least, the agency’s intelligence analysts will have to up their writing game.

TRIVIA ANSWER

The tradition began with Reagan’s inauguration in 1981.

Before Reagan, the ceremony had been held on the Capitol’s East Front since the days of President ANDREW JACKSON, with a few exceptions. President WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT was sworn in inside the Senate chamber in 1909 due to a blizzard, and President FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’s fourth inauguration in 1945 was held at the White House.