Biden team delays releasing readouts of calls with foreign leaders

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Biden faces questions about transparency

Wall Street Journal editorial board member James Freeman tells ‘America’s Newsroom’ the press corps isn’t making the most of their opportunity to question the President-elect.

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team has only been in action for a few days but is already sparking concerns about transparency with the way it is handling putting out details of calls to foreign leaders -- releasing them long after other governments have done so.

Biden has spoken to a number of leaders in recent days, including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday.

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On Tuesday, leaders tweeted about the calls, with Macron putting out a photo of him taking the call. But there was silence from the Biden transition team until later in the day, when it released a list of readouts of all the calls Biden took. Until then, reporters were left relying on foreign sources for information on who Biden was speaking to and what was said.

Biden spoke to Johnson, when, according to a readout of the call, Biden expressed "his desire to strengthen the special relationship and re-double cooperation on issues of mutual concern,” mentioning issues including climate change and COVID-19.

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“The President-elect expressed his interest in cooperating with the U.K., NATO, and the EU on shared transatlantic priorities, and reaffirmed his support for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland,” the readout put out by his presidential transition team said.

But that was sometime after Johnson had sent out a tweet, in which he said he had congratulated Biden and looked forward to “strengthening the partnership between our countries and to working with him on our shared priorities – from tackling climate change to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic." Downing Street also released a lengthy readout of the call.

Multiple national security sources currently in office, but who are career appointees -- not Trump political appointees, described the practice to Fox News as unacceptable and one that broke with past precedent.

Sources also said that the Biden transition team released a readout of his calls with foreign governments yesterday only after being pushed by reporters to do so.

But a source familiar with the transition pushed back, saying that the plan was always to publish a single consolidated readout of all the day’s calls after they were completed, and it is what the transition team plans to continue doing with such calls going forward.

The approach drew criticism from some reporters, with Politico’s Ryan Lizza calling it part of a number of “discouraging” signs about press transparency.

“Discouraging signs about the Biden team and press access so far: no regular transition briefings, no readouts of calls with foreign leaders...no open press access to the candidate and his people. This is a break with tradition,” he tweeted.

The Trump administration has had some rocky moments with readouts. It stopped issuing readouts to the public in 2018, although it continued to distribute them to the press. 

The administration was accused of releasing a readout of an April 2019 call with the president of Ukraine that had little resemblance to the call itself -- the call was one of two that would later be the focus of the impeachment effort against Trump.

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Biden was widely criticized during his presidential campaign for rarely making himself available to answer questions from reporters, as he instead opted to do friendly interviews with liberal news organizations. 

It seems Biden’s strategy hasn’t changed, as he didn’t take questions from reporters after announcing his coronavirus advisory board on Monday in Wilmington, Del., quickly exiting the stage after his remarks as reporters shouted questions. 

Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.