Politico: Biden’s Advance Team is Full of ‘Turmoil and Toxicity’

As if President Biden didn’t have enough problems, Politico reports this morning that Biden’s advance team, the team tasked with handling the details of his travel, is full of unhappy people. The situation became enough of a problem that an investigation was launched last year to look into claims of harassment.

The culture within the office has gotten so bad that the White House Counsel’s Office opened an investigation, according to three people who were contacted last fall by the office for interviews. Specifically, they said, investigators looked into complaints of verbal harassment by Ian Mellul, the former associate director of presidential advance. Mellul resigned March 1 after a monthslong investigation, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Brie Moore, the former director of press advance, also resigned within the past few weeks following complaints from the press corps to the White House about her behavior, several people familiar with the office said…

The White House’s HR team opened an investigation into Mellul’s conduct about a year ago, which led to him getting management training and an executive coach, according to a person familiar with the situation. Eventually the counsel’s office decided to investigate Mellul after additional complaints were made before he was put on paid administrative leave and then resigned, the person said…

Mellul — who did advance for Biden’s 2020 campaign and joined the White House early on in the presidency — would threaten staffers that he would “ruin your life” when mistakes were made and regularly called junior staffers “pieces of shit” and “worthless,” according to two of the people who witnessed his actions. Mellul would also demand interns run personal errands, like picking up his dry cleaning.

It’s interesting that people who routinely dealt with the media on behalf of the president were able to get away with this behavior without a word of it leaking to the press in any form for an entire year. Surely there were rumors, as there are in every workplace. There must have been reporters who had heard about this prior to this week?

The fact that Biden’s advance team was a toxic place to work was apparently well known in the White House. Politico reports that experienced staffer declined to pitch in when asked for help because they didn’t want to become part of the turmoil. And the person in charge of the advance office, Ryan Montoya, also knew what was going on because people went to him more than once to complain.

“Ryan Montoya is the head of the department who I think everyone would blame for this whole issue. People went to Ryan many times and Ryan would just laugh it off and ignore it,” said a former White House official.

Montoya himself was also accused of occasionally screaming at the staff though a couple of current staffers disputed that.

In any case, you really have to take a step back and consider the position these staffers are in (or were before they resigned/were fired). As I’ve pointed out previously, Joe Biden is under intense pressure to demonstrate his strength and endurance as he runs for reelection this year. Unlike the 2020 campaign which could conveniently be run from Biden’s basement thanks to the pandemic, this time people are expecting a traditional campaign in which Biden is traveling the country and generally showing a lot of energy.

Putting aside his shouty State of the Union speech last week, there remains some significant doubt that Biden is up to the task. That means the pressure to carefully manage each event he holds is tremendous, whether that even is technically a campaign event or a presidential visit doesn’t really matter. The bottom line is that right now Joe Biden can’t afford any public mistakes of any kind. Everything has to be very tightly controlled and a lot of that pressure is probably being felt by people like Ian Mellul and others in the advance office. I’m not trying to excuse what sounds like very bad behavior, but I think it’s possible to understand why a person in his position might be feeling intense stress right now. 

Democrats routinely tell American that the fate of democracy will be determined by this election, with team Biden being on the side of civilization and a bright future. At the same time, the advance team knows the fate of Biden’s reelection is in their hands. One slip, literal or figurative could be catastrophic. That’s a lot a pressure for anyone to deal with. I’m not surprised some of his team aren’t handling it well.