https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfwM_F8f6o0
Back in early December 2017, in the closing days of the first year of the Trump administration, I happened to tune into a YouTube live stream of a minor Federal government event.
It was the formal swearing-in of a woman called Emily W. Murphy as the new US General Services Administration Adminstrator. You can watch the stream if you wish, as it’s still up on the link above.
She was introduced at the lectern first by Timothy Horne, who like so many others in the Trump administration was an Acting Administrator, and then by Mick Mulvaney the director of OMB (Office Management & Budget) who later became president Trump’s Chief of Staff for a year in 2019.
You can watch Emily take her oath of office to the Constitution, and then do a simpering Oscars style acceptance speech at the lectern - neither of which have worn very well over time. She finishes her brief speech by inviting everyone present to pile into the coffee and donuts behind her, which at a cursory glance appears to be her staple diet.
I had an odd feeling at the time that this wouldn’t be her last rodeo on the public stage, and so it has proved.
Barely a few days into her tenure at GSA in December 2017, Emily Murphy found herself in the middle of a heated political controversy over the abrupt cancellation of the new FBI headquarters project. The FBI were on the brink of a long scheduled move from the ageing J. Edgar Hoover Building which was falling apart and no longer secure, when president Trump suddenly intervened and cancelled the entire project. Democrat politicians claimed that Trump deliberately killed the plan in order to prevent the vacant site from being developed into a hotel that might compete with the Trump Hotel just across the street.
The White House denied that Trump’s business interests had played any part in this decision, and Emily Murphy was called in front of a Congressional oversight committee where she testified that the decision to stop the FBI moving its HQ came solely from the FBI without Trump’s involvement.
But three months later, the GSA inspector general (IG) released a report finding that Murphy's statement to Congress was "incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with White House officials in the decision-making."[ According to the report, Murphy and other GSA officials had multiple meetings with Trump about the FBI headquarters, specifically a two-day meeting in January 2018 between Murphy, Trump, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, and budget director Mick Mulvaney.The IG report also found that GSA officials misrepresented the costs of an alternative plan to build a new FBI headquarters in downtown D.C., portraying the replacement plan as cheaper than the original plan when it would actually be more expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_W._Murphy
After this debacle, Emily W. Murphy somehow managed to keep both her job, and her head under the parapet, until the 2020 US presidential elections took place on Tuesday the 3rd November. By Friday 6th November the decision desks of every single polling and media organisation of any significance had called the election result in favour of the Democrat challenger Joe Biden and VP elect Kamala Harrison.
At this point, Emily Murphy as GSA adminstrator had exactly one job left to do, which was to sign-off the documentation authorising all Federal government agencies to begin the normal process of assigning budgets, office space, computer and IT resources (including emails and website addresses) and begin briefing the members of the incoming administration so that an orderly and peaceful transition of government can take place.
Emily Murphy however remains unconvinced. Two full weeks after the election was called for the Biden ticket, she apparently remains unconvinced as to what the electoral outcome really is, and what precise legal threshold has to be passed for her to put down her donuts and pick up her pen to sign-off the transition authorisation.
According to CNN, president Trump has refused to concede, and has quite deliberately chosen to obstruct the peaceful transition, partly out of personal spite, and so that he can also carry on fleecing money out of his MAGA base supporters - supposedly to “Fight the steal”. The presumption is that the GSA administrator who originallly began her career as an administrative assistant at the Republican National Committee (RNC) is taking her cues from president Trump on this matter.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/trump-democrats-election/index.html
As of Monday next week, many more of the election results will fall due for official certification. Emily W. Murphy is then likely to find herself being called in front of a Congressional oversight committee on subpoena for the second time, and asked to explain her behaviour.
With a raging pandemic killing thousands of Americans a day and the entire process of federal government in a needless deadlock because of her actions, it’s unlikely to go well for her.
