Biden has spoken with some GOP senators, chief of staff says

President-elect Joe Biden has spoken to some Republican senators and Republican governors in recent days, his future White House chief of staff said Thursday, even as many GOP lawmakers defend President Trump’s refusal to concede the election.

“Joe Biden has spoken to Republicans. He’s spoken to some Republican senators, some Republican governors,” Ron Klain said on MSNBC.

Klain would not specify whom Biden had spoken to in the GOP, but noted he still has not spoken to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“There will be a time and a place for Joe Biden and Senator McConnell to talk,” Klain said. “They obviously need no introduction to one another.”

Klain defended the secrecy around which Republicans have spoken with Biden, saying the president-elect has been having “private conversations with individuals” and that the calls would be detailed “when both sides agree to readout the calls.”

He added that the calls were a mix of outreach from Biden to the Republicans and vice versa. But the conversations indicate that at least some in the GOP are interacting privately with the Democrat as he prepares to take office, even as many Republicans publicly stand by Trump’s denial that he lost the election.

While a few senators, such as Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), have referred to Biden as president-elect, most Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have defended Trump’s right to pursue legal challenges in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, even as some of those lawsuits are rejected or would not apply to enough votes to change the outcome.

Trump himself has spread false allegations about votes being changed, and it does not appear he will formally concede.

In a bit of a shift, several Senate Republicans have called for Biden to get access to intelligence briefings after Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said that the Democrat should be getting the briefings and that he would “step in” if they weren’t happening by Friday. 

The calls come as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence isn’t interacting with the Biden campaign because the General Services Administration hasn’t certified Biden as the winner.