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Biden to bring Donilon and Ricchetti into White House

17 November 2020
 Dan Ackermann

President-elect Joe Biden is bringing two longtime confidants — Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon — into the West Wing along with newer faces as he fills out out his senior White House staff.

Driving the news: Biden named Ron Klain as his chief of staff last week, and on Tuesday announced other members of his senior team.

  • Donilon, a longtime member of Biden's circle, will serve as senior adviser, while Ricchetti, who was one of Biden's chiefs of staff as vice president, will serve as counselor.
  • Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana will resign his seat in Congress and serve as senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
  • Jen O’Malley Dillon, who took over Biden's campaign in April, will serve as deputy chief of staff.
  • Dana Remus, who was the campaign's general legal counsel, will be White House counsel.
  • Julie Rodriguez, who joined the Biden campaign as deputy campaign manager in May, will direct the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
  • Annie Tomasini, a longtime Biden adviser and former deputy press secretary when he was vice president, will be director of Oval Office operations.

Top staff members for incoming first lady Jill Biden also were announced: Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon, a former ambassador to Uruguay, as chief of staff; and Anthony Bernal, a veteran of Biden's vice presidential office, as senior adviser.

Why it matters: Biden is balancing his old guard with some fresh faces, giving Richmond a major role and rewarding O'Malley Dillon for successfully running his campaign.

  • By giving Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, a role in coordinating policy across all agencies, he is signaling to Hispanics that their concerns will be heard.
  • "America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation,” Biden said in a statement with the announcements.

What they're saying: “President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris have an ambitious and urgent agenda for action," Klain said. "The team we have already started to assemble will enable us to meet the challenges facing our country on day one."

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.