Biden: My change team is being hampered by the current Trump administration

Biden said on December 28th that his team has faced “obstruction by the heads of the Department of Defence and Management and Budget Office until they seek to collect the information needed to continue the transition of power.

For now, we are not just getting all the information we need from the outgoing administration in the main areas of national security”, Biden said.

Speaking in his hometown of Wilmington, Delauare, Biden said he was looking for a “clear path” from the administration on the leaving over American troops worldwide.

He said his team needs a “complete resuscitation in budget planning under way at the Department of Defence and other agencies in order to avoid any confusion space”, Biden said.

Beden spoke after he and Deputy President-elect Kamala Harris were informed by their teams in transition to national security, including his nominated for Secretary of State, Defence Secretary and his future National Security Council.

The president-elect said his team found that key security agencies “have caused major damage” while Trump was in office.

Many of them have been emptied on personnel, capacity and on morals”, he said.

The “all this makes it more difficult for our government to protect the American people, to protect our vital interests in a world where threats are constantly developed and our opponents are constantly adapting to”, Biden added.

Beden also spoke of the need to rebuild the global alliances, for which he said they were necessary to fight climate change, address COVID-19's pandemic and face the growing threat posed by China.

For now, there is a big vacuum. We will have to regain the trust of a world that has begun to find ways to work around us or without us”, he said.

Trump implemented a foreign policy “America of the first” that was accompanied by a withdrawal from global alliances and treaties. After losing him to Beden in the November 3rd election, he named Chris Miller as acting Secretary of Defence.

Miller issued a statement on December 28th saying that Pentagon's co-ordination efforts with the transition team “stum exceeded those of the recent administrations”.

The department has conducted 164 interviews with more than 400 officials and has provided more than 5,000 pages of documents, which is “much more than initially required by the Biden” transition team, Miller said in a statement.

He added that Defence Department officials will continue to work on a <x0 transparent and colleague approach” to support the transition.

The Pentagon changes come amid tensions with Iran, which Trump blamed for a missile attack on the US Embassy in Iraq earlier this month.

American officials have suggested that Iran could carry out revenge attacks to mark the first anniversary of the American fears attack that killed Iran's top general, Qasem Solejmani and Iraqi militia leaders outside Baghdad Airport on January 3rd.