New Book Claims Biden Threatened Staff Over Negative Leaks About Harris

An upcoming book asserts that President Joe Biden threatened to fire White House staff if they were found to have leaked negative information regarding Vice President Kamala Harris after her poorly received trip to Guatemala, Politico reported on Tuesday.

''This Will Not Pass'' by New York Times journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns claims Biden confronted the staffers after a story emerged last summer characterizing the vice president's office as an ''abusive environment.''

At the same time, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield allegedly blamed Harris for her office's mismanagement and inability to fulfill the tasks assigned to her by the president.

''In private, Bedingfield had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris's political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: Her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco. Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president's staff,'' the book reads.

Bedingfield, however, criticized the book's claim in a statement to Politico.

''The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know,'' she said. ''Vice President Harris is a force in this administration, and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward.''

Martin and Burns' book also describes Biden and his vice president's relationship as ''friendly but not close.'' The pair writes, ''Their weekly lunches lacked a real depth of personal and political intimacy.''

The writers further suggest that Jill Biden was stunned by her husband's decision to pick Harris as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2020.

''Speaking in confidence with a close adviser to her husband's campaign, the future first lady posed a pointed question. There are millions of people in the United States, she began. Why, she asked, do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?'' the book reads.

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