On New Years Eve, Biden team dumps a bunch of financial disclosures for nominees including SoS Tony Blinken and DNI Avril Haines
Haines lists Peter Thiel's Palantir.
She was a consultant there from July 2017 to June 2020 and lists 180k in income from the company
SoS nominee Tony Blinken's financial disclosure includes at least 5k income from:
Blackstone
BofA
Facebook
Uber
McKinsey
SoftBank
Gilead
Lazard
Boeing
AT&T
the Biden team tells me on the timing that the finalized documents went over mid week (today is Thursday) and just posted.
Story TK but Yellen has made millions from Wall St. speeches since leaving the Fed including
Goldman
Citi
UBS
City National Bank
Barclays
Sen. Wyden’s comms adviser from the Finance committee just emailed me his statement of support for Yellen
“she has shared her views in a range of forums—congressional testimony, media interviews, speaking engagements, and opinion pieces. She’s been fully transparent.”
.@AOC responds to some dems calling the reporting on Yellen’s wall st. speeches sexist
“We can note how scrutiny gets disproportionately wielded on women, but Wall St ties are very reasonable to examine”
Biden going old-school and meeting with newspaper columnists including @GeraldFSeib
Biden tells them why he's optimistic on bipartisanship: "Republicans are beginning to realize that there is a center that has to be responded to" wsj.com/articles/biden…
To the doubters, he says: "I’m going to be able to get stuff done in the environment none of you are going to believe,” he said, citing in particular changing views within the business community. “I could not have gotten it done six years ago.”
.@ktumulty was also part of the group.
She reports that Biden noted that he has taken some criticism for stocking his administration with many familiar figures
“One reason you need old hands is the old hands know where the old bodies might be buried.”
our "the oppo book" item is about Jake Sullivan playing "the senator game" w/ friends on the SCOTUS steps that @NatashaBertrand reported
.@zcolman@eleanor_mueller@RebeccaARainey report on Rep. Andy Levin getting some support from environmental groups for Labor Secretary, the latest jockeying for the post which includes CAPAC pushing for Julie Su and CBCPAC pushing for Patrick Gaspard. politico.com/news/2020/12/2…
NEW in tonight's TrAnSiTION playBOOK:
In 2016, Ron Klain chose Hillary over Joe and admitted: “I am definitely dead to them—but I’m glad to be on Team HRC.”
Now, he's been resurrected and the frontrunner to be Biden's Chief of Staff.
PLUS... (thread) politico.com/newsletters/tr…
More west wing musical chairs:
NSA: If it's Tony Blinken, Dems expect Coons or Rice to be the frontrunner for state. But the there's no clear spot for Jake Sullivan. If it's Jake for NSA, the Dems think Blinken is a shoo-in at State.
on the econ team, Jason Furman tells us that he is NOT joining the admin: "I’m very happy with my job, my family would never let me go back to DC at this stage of our lives.”
for National Econ Council, the contenders include Jeff Zients & Ben Harris
Other bits:
The GSA stand-off continues w/ a spokesperson telling us: "There are no updates at this time and GSA’s position remains the same. An ascertainment has not yet been made."
Many congressional Dems are furious. Here's one letter today.