Biden transition team didn't wait for verdict to get busy

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden's transition team didn't wait for a verdict in the presidential race before getting to work.

Well before Saturday's victory for Biden, longtime aide Ted Kaufman had been leading efforts to ensure the former vice president can begin building out a government in anticipation of a victory.

Kaufman is a former senator from Delaware who was appointed to fill the seat vacated when Biden was elected vice president. He also worked on Barack Obama’s transition team in 2008, and helped write legislation formalizing the presidential transition process.

Biden first asked Kaufman to start work on a just-in-case transition in April, shortly after the former vice president locked up the presidential nomination at the conclusion of a once-crowded Democratic primary.

The transition can be a frenzied process even under normal circumstances.

Before Saturday's decision in the race, an odd political limbo had taken hold. The Biden team was moving forward but couldn't tackle all that needed to be accomplished; President Donald Trump was claiming without evidence that the election was being stolen from him.

It was at least somewhat reminiscent of the 2000 presidential race and that year's postelection legal fight over the recount in Florida. After more than a month, the dispute between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore was decided by the Supreme Court — truncating the transition period to just 39 days before the January 2001 inauguration.

Clay Johnson, who headed Bush's transition team, said Biden’s advisers couldn't “wait to be sure that the president-elect really is the president-elect."

Johnson said that in June of 1999 — about 17 months before Election Day 2000 — Bush approached him about heading the possible transition,...