Politico

President Joe Biden will not pardon his son Hunter if he is convicted of the charges against him, the White House said on Thursday.

Hunter Biden has been charged with two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony gun charge. When asked during her briefing whether there was any possibility that the president would eventually pardon his son, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday replied, “No,” and declined to comment further.

The White House statement comes the day after a new challenge for Hunter Biden in his ongoing legal troubles. He has been the subject of a yearslong investigation into failure to pay taxes in his business dealings. He was also charged last month with possession of a firearm by a person who is a known drug user over a gun he owned for 11 days in 2018, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The president’s son had planned to strike a plea agreement with the Department of Justice that would avert a trial and likely allow him to escape punishment on felony charges. Prosecutors in the plea deal planned to recommend that Biden receive two years of probation on the charges.

On Wednesday, however, that deal crumbled when U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika expressed concern about the details of the plea deal, which includes stipulations about not prosecuting Biden on tax crimes in the future.

“These agreements are not straightforward, and they contain some atypical provisions,” Noreika said Wednesday, suggesting that Biden’s legal team reconvene to discuss the details of the deal.

The roadblock will postpone proceedings, likely for at least a month. The White House has largely avoided commenting on Hunter Biden’s legal troubles, with the president repeatedly expressing his unequivocal love for his son.

Hunter Biden’s plea deal is on hold after a judge raised questions Wednesday about the proposed plea agreement and a related agreement known as a pretrial diversion program.

Lawyers detailed aspects of the proposed deal in court, but the documents themselves have not been published on the court’s docket. POLITICO obtained them and is publishing them here.

Under the proposed plea agreement and diversion agreement, Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and would be able to avoid punishment on a felony gun charge if he stayed out of trouble for two years. But at a tense court hearing, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned the constitutionality of the diversion agreement and refused to sign off on the deal, at least for now. Lawyers are due back in court in several weeks to revisit the issue.

Kevin McCarthy edged back from the brink of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on Tuesday, less than a day after suggesting his party was close to announcing one.

The speaker set off a Washington kerfuffle Monday night when he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he believed the House GOP’s investigations into Hunter Biden’s business dealings were “rising to the level of [an] impeachment inquiry,” presumably into his father.

But during lengthy Tuesday question-and-answer sessions with reporters, McCarthy said his televised remarks were not meant as an announcement of any new steps. Instead, the California Republican clarified that the myriad of allegations he is seeing from Republicans’ investigations “could” eventually merit an impeachment inquiry.

“I wasn’t announcing it,” McCarthy said of his Fox News comments. “I simply said that the actions that I’m seeing by this administration — withholding the agencies from being able to work with us, that would rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry.”

“We … still have a number of investigations going forward now. The committees are working in good faith. They’re finding new information all the time,” McCarthy added.

He later took to Twitter with a similar dialing back of the tone he took on Fox, writing: “If evidence continues to rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry, House Republicans will act.”

The speaker’s pullback comes as Republicans face fierce pressure from their right flank to impeach Biden or a Cabinet official — a high bar that would require near-total GOP unity, given their five-seat majority. A swath of McCarthy’s conference remains skeptical of any impeachment effort at the moment, underscoring the hurdle that conservative backers face despite GOP control of the House.

McCarthy said on Tuesday that he has no timeline for when House Republicans might make a call on whether or not to vote to formalize an impeachment inquiry, which he has described as a step that would give Republicans more investigative tools. Even if Republicans voted to take that step, they would still need to decide whether to hold an impeachment vote in committee, before taking the matter to the House floor.

Asked how long Biden’s Cabinet departments have to indicate whether they will cooperate with GOP investigations, McCarthy also declined to give a firm timeline. “Committees are currently bringing people in for interviews,” he noted.

“We’ve got a number of people coming in,” McCarthy said. “They could come … forward with all the information these committees are requesting, and we wouldn’t have to rise to [that].”

McCarthy, in his Fox News interview, stopped short of explicitly saying he would move to formalize an inquiry against Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland or any other administration official.

In addition, he broadly discussed the different threads the House GOP is investigating. Topics currently getting vetted range from payments that Biden’s family members received from foreign companies to IRS whistleblowers who allege the Justice Department hampered the federal probe of Hunter Biden to an uncorroborated FBI document that links the president to bribery allegations involving the First Son.

Citing that variety of activity, McCarthy argued Monday night that the Republican investigations are building in the direction of what would be a historic impeachment inquiry. While he has previously opened the door to a potential impeachment inquiry into Garland if Republicans could prove he had lied, those remarks amounted to his strongest statement yet on a Biden impeachment.

Republicans last month punted an impeachment resolution from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) back to committees for further work.

In the weeks since then, however, Republicans have pushed to escalate their investigation into President Biden, Hunter Biden and the years-long federal investigation of the First Son. The two IRS whistleblowers who allege federal intervention into the Hunter Biden probe testified last week, and negotiations are underway for a follow-up hearing with David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in charge of that probe.

But McCarthy’s remarks fueled new impeachment chatter from some of its most ardent conservative backers on Tuesday — marking a potential headache of the California Republican’s own making.

“As we’ve continued to amass evidence and information, I certainly think, bare minimum, we should be doing an impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told reporters on Tuesday.

Both Garland and Weiss have denied the whistleblower claims that the DOJ meddled in the Hunter Biden probe. DOJ has offered to have Weiss testify on the Hill after the August recess in late September or mid-October. Garland is already scheduled to testify before the House in late September as part of a routine oversight hearing.

“The only way we can investigate that is through an impeachment inquiry so that the committee would have the power to get all the documents,” McCarthy said. “What I said last night, and … I said it before, the more this continues to unravel it reaches to the level of impeachment inquiry.”

Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

A federal judge Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s new regulation restricting asylum-seekers, one that contributed to a severe drop in crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few months.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, an Obama appointee in Oakland, Calif., knocked down the restrictions as “arbitrary and capricious,” while staying his ruling for 14 days to give the Biden administration an opportunity to appeal. Tigar also halted a similar measure — the Trump administration’s so-called transit ban — a few years ago, joking during last week’s hearing that he heard “2023 was going to be a big year for sequels.”

The judge’s 35-page ruling marks the latest legal hurdle facing the Biden administration’s immigration policy, which has faced multiple challenges from both ends of the political spectrum. Tigar’s decision jeopardizes the administration’s strictest deterrence measure to date and comes as illegal border crossings have plunged to their lowest level since President Joe Biden’s first full month in office.

Tigar detailed a series of legal faults with the Biden asylum rule, including its basis on outdated or inaccurate assumptions and that it was made available for public comment during an abbreviated 33-day window. The judge raised particular concern about the administration’s effort to require most asylum applicants to present themselves at established ports of entry, rather than claiming asylum after crossing between border posts.

“The Court concludes that the Rule is contrary to law because it presumes ineligible for asylum noncitizens who enter between ports of entry, using a manner of entry that Congress expressly intended should not affect access to asylum,” Tigar wrote.

Requests for comment from the White House, Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Biden’s “asylum ban,” released in May and set to expire in two years, bars some migrants from applying for humanitarian protection if they cross the border illegally or fail to first apply for safe harbor while crossing through another country on the way to the U.S. The rule is not applied to certain migrants, including unaccompanied children, asylum-seekers who enter at a legal port of entry or those fleeing “imminent” harm.

Immediately after the rule was issued this spring, upon the end of Title 42 health orders, immigrants rights advocates moved to sue the Biden administration and accused the White House of deploying President Donald Trump’s immigration playbook.

Administration officials have rejected the notion that the two-year rule is like the Trump transit ban, which also required asylum-seekers to seek asylum through the first country they crossed on their way to the U.S. During last week’s hearing, a Justice Department lawyer argued that the current asylum restrictions are different because they are paired with a number of new legal pathways and that asylum-seekers can apply for an appointment through the CBP smartphone app.

The southern border has remained a vexing challenge for the president — one that’s not expected to dissipate as Republicans seize on the border as a base rallying issue in 2024. The ruling is also a blow to the Biden administration’s post-Title 42 border plan, but it’s not clear how it will affect declining border crossings.

While administration officials have credited the asylum rule in part for the drop in border crossings, some immigration experts argue the use of the CBP One app, voluntary departure and the expansion of legal pathways have played a larger role in the plummeting border numbers.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday established a national monument to commemorate the legacy of Emmett Till, whose murder helped ignite the civil rights movement, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.

Biden signed the proclamation to create the new Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument on the 82nd anniversary of the Black Chicago teenager’s birth.

“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books, bury history, we’re making it clear — crystal, crystal clear: While darkness and denialism can hide much, they erase nothing,” the president said at the White House signing ceremony, appearing to reference Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida with his remarks. “Only with truth comes healing, justice, repair and another step forward toward forming a more perfect union. We’ve got a hell of a long way to go.”

The signing comes amid escalating tensions in the U.S. over racial issues, like the inclusion of teachings about slavery and Black history in public schools. On Friday, DeSantis dismissed Vice President Kamala Harris’ criticism of the Black history standards recently adopted by the Florida Board of Education. Harris, appearing at Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.’s national convention in Indianapolis on Thursday, had taken aim at the standards, which include instruction on how slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said in her keynote address. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”

The vice president rehashed those comments at the proclamation signing ceremony Tuesday.

“Today, there are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past, those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said. “Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the Florida governor’s remarks “inaccurate” and “insulting” during her briefing Monday, saying they obstruct an honest portrayal of the nation’s history. She further highlighted the new monument as an “important moment” and part of depicting “the broader story of American Black oppression, their survival.”

The Till monument, the fourth national monument designated by the Biden administration, will span three sites in Illinois and Mississippi that hold historical importance to the story of Emmett Till’s life and the events surrounding his racially motivated murder in 1955.

Till was just 14 when a white female grocery clerk accused him of whistling at her and making inappropriate advances during a visit to family in the Mississippi Delta. He was then abducted and tortured, and his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River. Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, both white men, were tried on murder charges but acquitted by an all-white jury after an hour of deliberations. Months later, the men confessed to the crime in a paid interview with Look magazine.

Till’s death became a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, with Rosa Parks saying his memory inspired her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in a historic act of defiance of racial segregation laws. The activism of Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted on an open-casket funeral to show the world the brutality her son endured, helped galvanize public outrage and highlight the deep-seated inequalities of the Jim Crow South.

“It’s just barbaric what happened,” Biden said of Till-Mobley’s choice Tuesday. “All you moms out there — imagine the courage it took to say, ‘Let them see.’ The courage.”

The monument’s sites encompass the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood in Chicago where Till’s funeral service took place. They also include the Graball Landing site, where his body was believed to be discovered, and the courthouse in Tallahatchie, Miss., where his killers were acquitted.

In March 2022, Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, recognizing lynching as a federal hate crime.

The Biden family’s dog, Commander, has bitten several Secret Service agents — sending one to the hospital — and exhibited “aggressive behavior” in at least 10 incidents since he took residence in the White House in December 2021, emails obtained by a conservative watchdog agency show.

The emails describe several biting incidents involving the 2-year-old German Shepherd between Washington and Delaware, where the Bidens often frequent, dating from October 2022 to January of this year. Judicial Watch, a Washington-based conservative group, obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Homeland Security and published them Tuesday morning.

In the emails, Secret Service officials detail instances of Commander biting officers and warning of the dog’s “aggressive behavior.” Six incidents were significant bites that sometimes resulted in medical attention, two were aggressive incidents that did not result in a bite and another two were described as “playful” or “friendly” bites that did not require medical attention.

At least two of the bites occurred while Commander was off a leash: once with President Joe Biden and other family members after leaving the family movie theater in December 2022, and once when first lady Jill Biden was walking Commander in the Kennedy Garden in November 2022.

The White House said in a statement to POLITICO that the Bidens are working to establish better protocols to ensure safety.

“The White House complex is a unique and often stressful environment for family pets, and the First Family is working through ways to make this situation better for everyone,” first lady spokesperson Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement Tuesday. “They have been partnering with the Secret Service and Executive Residence staff on additional leashing protocols and training, as well as establishing designated areas for Commander to run and exercise.”

“According to the Secret Service, each incident referenced was treated similarly to comparable workplace injuries, with relevant notifications and reporting procedures followed,” Alexander added. “The President and First Lady are incredibly grateful to the Secret Service and Executive Residence staff for all they do to keep them, their family, and the country safe.”

Commander, a gift to the president from his family, took the place of another dog, Major, who moved homes after also perpetrating several biting incidents on the White House campus. The Bidens also have a cat named Willow.

Earlier in November 2022, Commander bit one agent on the arm and leg, according to the emails, leading to considerable pain and a hospital visit.

“What a joke [redacted] — if it wasn’t their dog he would have already been put down — freaking clown needs a muzzle,” one agent wrote in an email to the victim shortly after that incident.

Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden on Monday named longtime Hill aide Shuwanza Goff as his director of legislative affairs, just in time for the coming high-stakes spending negotiations with Republicans.

Goff, the first Black woman named to the role, will succeed Louisa Terrell, who’s held the position since the start of the Biden administration and steered the White House’s multitrillion-dollar agenda through narrow congressional majorities. Goff’s new role will be particularly critical in the coming weeks, given her amicable relationships with House Republicans, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as she takes on the task of navigating a divided government and a looming government shutdown threat.

“Shuwanza is a proven leader and trusted voice on both sides of the aisle. She returns to the White House with strong relationships across both Chambers, forged over more than a decade on Capitol Hill,” Biden said in a statement.

The administration’s appointment has satisfied Hill allies who had pushed the administration to consider diverse candidates for the coveted spot. Some congressional Democrats had privately grumbled about about the rumored shortlist, worried the candidate list lacked diversity.

Goff is a veteran of Capitol Hill and is widely respected on both sides of the aisle — and one of the few Democratic aides to have longstanding relationships with Republicans like McCarthy. She started her Hill career in the office of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in 2008, eventually rising to become his floor director when he was in Democratic leadership.

She rose through the ranks in former Majority Leader Hoyer’s office but also built strong ties to progressive Democrats, who were privately cheering her return to the White House on Monday.

She previously served as the deputy director of the White House Legislative Affairs Office and its House Liaison for the first two years of the Biden administration before departing earlier this year for the private sector. Goff had been part of the White House’s legislative brawls over the infrastructure bill and the party-line social spending packages, among other issues.

Democrats immediately cheered the announcement, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) tweeting: “Shuwanza is the best of the best.”

The Associated Press first reported Goff’s appointment.

Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden is eyeing redemption in North Carolina next year.

Biden lost the Tar Heel state to Donald Trump by just 1.4 percentage points in 2020, and a Democrat at the top of the ticket hasn’t managed to turn North Carolina blue since Barack Obama did in 2008. Now Biden’s team sees opportunity in 2024 amid a fresh abortion ban, a contentious, expensive gubernatorial race and steady population growth that has ballooned urban and suburban areas.

State and local party leaders are pointing to North Carolina as the next Arizona or Georgia for Democrats. They’re calling on the Biden campaign and DNC to invest heavily in the state because without it, they say, Republicans don’t have a path to the White House.

“I think the road to reelection will run through North Carolina this time. And we’re encouraged by the [Biden] campaign’s early commitment to our state,” said Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a member of the president’s national advisory board. “It’s pretty clear that they have decided that North Carolina is going to be one of their targeted states … I told the president that this investment is going to be critical to his reelection, and that I believe we can win this state for him.”

This early in a presidential contest, it’s typical to hear campaigns talk about new prospects and plans to expand the electoral map, and it’s no surprise that the president’s team is looking to North Carolina, a battleground state Democrats have long set their sights on. But beyond campaign chatter and a string of early appearances by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in recent months, it won’t be clear just how seriously national Democrats are taking North Carolina until next year, when the campaign, DNC and top super PACs decide how much money and resources to pour into the state.

The Biden campaign came out early in May with a strategy memo outlining its 2024 path to victory, including its plans to target the Tar Heel state. The DNC and campaign have already run ads in North Carolina this cycle, including on television and on two billboards in Charlotte and Rocky Mount highlighting Biden’s economic agenda. The campaign also tapped Cooper, who is legally barred from running for another term for governor, and Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, as members of the president’s national advisory board.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris have a strong record that resonates with North Carolinians and will mobilize the voters we need to win in 2024, including creating thousands of jobs, lowering costs for families, and fighting against MAGA extremist abortion bans,” said Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz. “We fully expect North Carolina to be competitive, and plan to run an aggressive and winning campaign that builds on our significant investments throughout the state.”

The DNC is also supplementing state Dems’ efforts to mobilize voters in the wake of North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban, alongside increasing its investment to the NC Democratic Party to $12,500 a month, a 25 percent increase from 2020 and a 66 percent increase from 2016.

Top Democratic super PACs are also eyeing North Carolina, though it’s too early to say where the groups will target the funds. Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, said his PAC is running a major advertising program in 2020 and examining options — North Carolina among them.

“We are excited the Biden campaign is investing in North Carolina as Republicans always encourage Democrats to light money on fire in places where voters have solidly rejected them cycle after cycle,” RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn said in a statement, pointing to Cheri Beasley’s loss to Sen. Ted Budd in 2022 and a decline in voter registration among Democrats, while Republicans have seen slight gains.

Biden and Harris have frequented the state in recent months, with the vice president traveling to Charlotte on the anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights in June. In May, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode Cooper’s veto, becoming the latest state to ban the medical procedure, a move Democrats expect will drive voters to the polls next year.

GOP strategist Jonathan Felts said he’d welcome more Biden-Harris appearances, particularly those focused on the president’s message on the economy — the issue he thinks will take precedence in the state. He added that in 2022, Beasley often avoided appearing with the president, a nod to Biden’s sagging poll numbers.

“In terms of real world impact right now, working families are still suffering,” said Felts, the founder of the Indie Group NC who headed the 2004 Bush-Cheney North Carolina reelect in 2004 and later served as the White House political director under Bush. “Having Joe Biden coming out here to talk about his economic record — it would probably be illegal campaign coordination activity — but I’m sure we can find a Republican super PAC to pay the cost of that, because that’ll be great footage for Republican TV ads.”

Democrats argue the political environment in the state has only shifted in Biden’s advantage. Trump had a more favorable North Carolina electorate in 2020 compared with 2016, with a higher percentage of registered Republicans voting and higher rural and white turnout, but he still performed worse than he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016, said Democratic political consultant Morgan Jackson. That’s because Democrats have been able to overcome the strength of Republicans in rural areas in North Carolina — which is home to the second largest rural population in the U.S. behind Texas — due to the gains they’re making in urban and suburban counties. Democrats are now getting a higher percentage of the total vote, Jackson said.

Jackson, a co-founder of Nexus Strategies and a consultant to both Cooper and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, also argues that 2024 can’t be compared to the midterms, when national Democrats were accused of neglecting Beasley. Biden and the DNC’s map is different from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s in 2022, and based on near-daily conversations with the campaign, he expects to see a lot more of Biden and Harris over the next year, and that the money is coming with them.

“We may not get Wisconsin money or Pennsylvania, but I don’t think anybody else is going to get that kind of money. I think we are that next level,” Jackson said.

The Biden campaign is also betting that the gubernatorial election could offset some of its costs in the state, which could see its most expensive governor’s race in history. Democrats are hoping for a Trump-Mark Robinson ticket. The Republican lieutenant governor, who supports an outright abortion ban and opposes same-sex marriage, is leading the pack on the GOP side to face-off with Stein, who’s served as the state’s top law enforcement officer since he was elected in 2016.

“A Donald Trump-Mark Robinson ticket is something Democrats look forward to here. Both of those guys have an ability to repel swing voters like nothing else,” Jackson said.

Key to the Biden campaign’s strategy in North Carolina, Democrats also point to party leaders in the state like Cooper and Anderson Clayton, the state’s 25-year-old Democratic Party chair, surrogates they say can gin up enthusiasm among young voters in the state.

Clayton, who took over the state party earlier this year, is already traveling across the state to energize young people, and plans to tap into the hundreds of thousands of voters enrolled in North Carolina colleges and universities this fall. She’s also leaning into year-round organizing, working to reengage with rural voters and to make sure no Republicans run uncontested in the state.

“It’s absolutely absurd to think that a little more pixie dust on North Carolina wouldn’t have made our state go stronger for Joe Biden in 2020,” Clayton said. “All I can do is tell [national Democrats] that North Carolina is excited. Honestly we’re angry and energized … the energy on the ground is different.”

Just how much money national Democrats are willing to throw into the state will likely depend on who Biden’s opponent is. While it’s looking to be the Biden-Trump repeat Democrats are hoping for, it’s still early, said Jordan Shaw, executive vice president at OnMessage Inc., and a former campaign manager and state director for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). It would make sense for Democrats to invest heavily in the state if it’s Trump, but if another GOP contender like Tim Scott or Nikki Haley manages to break through, Shaw doesn’t see a path for a Biden win in the state.

“The numbers we’ve seen, Biden is woefully unpopular with unaffiliated voters. But Trump is too, so it may be a scenario where we have one of the most unpopular presidential contests in American history,” Shaw said. “But I think if Trump is not the nominee, then I think North Carolina falls off the map pretty quickly for the Democrats.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin presented President Joe Biden with a series of options for who should next serve as the Navy’s top officer in a meeting early this week.

One set had Adm. Samuel Paparo, who leads the U.S. Pacific Fleet, named as chief of naval operations. Both the president and the Pentagon chief were aware Paparo was Austin’s recommendation for the post.

Another slew of options put Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s current No. 2, in the top job. If she were nominated and later confirmed, Franchetti would make history as the first woman in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Biden debated those and other iterations with Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chief of Staff Jeff Zients in the Oval Office sometime in the last 48 hours. In the end, Biden went with a version that named Franchetti as the CNO and Paparo as the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Austin “was good with it,” said one U.S. official familiar with the meeting, and the secretary didn’t make a renewed case in White House for his top choice.

The White House officially announced those moves Friday, along with two other personnel changes within the Navy’s leadership structure.

The president doesn’t normally hand-pick the Navy’s top officer, so Biden’s decision to tap Franchetti for the job could be seen as a rebuke of Austin. But the move has not caused tension in the relationship, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum.

“The president had the chance to sit with the secretary of Defense, and they worked this slate together, and this is the slate, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

Asked if there was any daylight between Biden and Austin, Sullivan said, “I don’t believe there is.” Both men ended the discussion “feeling very good about where we are,” he said.

Seven Biden administration officials detailed how the president made the historic decision, most on the condition of anonymity to detail a sensitive internal process.

Nominating the first female member of the joint chiefs is a historic move for a president that has prioritized diversity since the beginning of his administration. At the Pentagon alone, Biden has nominated the first black Defense secretary (Austin), the first female deputy Defense secretary (Kathleen Hicks) and the first black officer to lead a military service (Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown).

But the decision was not an easy one. Although Franchetti, who currently serves as the Navy’s No. 2 officer, was an early frontrunner for the top Navy job, Austin earlier this year recommended Paparo for the role instead. As commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Paparo has focused on the Pentagon’s most pressing challenge: China’s growing naval power.

At the time, experts said Austin’s decision to recommend Paparo, who was on a glide path to lead Indo-Pacific Command, reflected more serious thinking about how to address the growing naval imbalance in the Pacific.

But the news of Austin’s recommendation leaked to the press within days, putting the Defense secretary in an awkward spot. Some senior naval officers criticized the decision internally, with some speculating that Austin put Paparo’s name forward so that he could nominate an Army officer to lead Indo-Pacific Command instead, according to two former Defense officials with knowledge of the debate.

Two Defense Department officials said that the decision to announce the nominations of Fanchetti, Paparo, Vice Adm. Jim Kilby to serve as vice chief of the Navy and Vice Adm. Stephen Koehler to replace Paparo as commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at the same time Friday may also place some pressure on the Senate, where Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has placed a blanket hold on all military nominees over his objection to the Pentagon’s abortion policy.

Adm. John Aquilino, the current Indo-Pacom chief, isn’t slated to step down until April, giving the Senate months to hold a hearing and confirm Paparo and Koehler. It also allows the Navy to work all the subsequent promotions down the chain of command.

One of the DOD officials also said that naming Paparo at the same time as Franchetti cuts short suggestions from some in Washington that an Army general could land the Indo-Pacom job, something the Navy has vehemently opposed as it has been a Navy billet for over 75 years.

The president ultimately decided to go with Franchetti due to her qualifications and background, said a second U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

Franchetti was a “strong fit for the role, and she wanted it,” the official said, noting that Paparo “is very happy to be going to Indo-Pacom.”

From Austin’s perspective, there are no “hard feelings,” said a third DOD official with knowledge of the discussions.