‘She has to finally come to a decision’: GSA chief Emily Murphy faces blowback as nation awaits vote certification

'She cannot avoid the responsibility that's hers to ascertain’

The administration of the General Services Administration (GSA) has received swift backlash over her refusal to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden as the victor of the 2020 US elections, as her predecessor said in a new interview: “She has to finally come to a decision.”

Emily Murphy, who holds the power to certify the results of the national vote and was appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the GSA in 2017, has so far blocked Mr Biden’s team from crucial materials required for a smooth transition.

In a new interview, former GSA administration David Barram said it was “clear that we should be recognizing Joe Biden as the president-elect” while calling out Ms Murphy over her failure to acknowledge the reality of the situation.

Noting he was “sympathetic for her,” Mr Barram, who held the position during the contentious 2000 presidential election, told the network: “It’s a tough spot to be in.”

“I just think she has to finally come to a decision and like I say, I’m very sympathetic for her. I think it will make everything work when she finally does,” he said, slamming Republicans for going along with the president’s unfounded conspiracies. “She cannot avoid the responsibility that's hers to ascertain. But it sure would be better for a lot of us if she had a lot more cover.”

Mr Barram said he and the Trump appointee spoke ahead of the 2020 elections in what he described was a “very cordial conversation” about his experience overseeing the office during the disputed vote count in Florida. He noted how the situation back then was “dramatically different” to what was occurring now, with Mr Trump failing to concede despite not having any credible evidence to back his claims of mass voter fraud.

As Mr Barram spoke, Ms Murphy was facing a deluge of criticism online for her failure to certify the results of the election.

A tweet the GSA administrator had pinned to her official Twitter page on Thursday featured over 40,000 replies — many from critics calling on her to certify the election — compared to less than 900 likes on the actual post itself. That is what Twitter users call “getting ratio’d,” in which a tweet receives a disproportionate level of replies compared to likes, often due to controversy or criticism.

Ms Murphy, who has become the subject of criticism by media personalities and politicians alike, also faced a slew of public statements demanding she maintain the oath she swore to when she was appointed to serve in her role. Hundreds of public health officials called on her to certify the results of the election as well, with 160 signing onto a letter demanding she take action immediately to begin the transition process to assist with Covid-19 recovery efforts.

Mr Biden has not directly called out Ms Murphy by name, though he has urged the Trump administration to accept the results of the election and move forward with a coordinated response to the Covid-19 pandemic with his transition team.

In a press conference earlier this week, the president-elect said “more people may die” if the current administration failed to comply with the transition. Mr Trump’s vaccination distribution team acknowledged in a conference call earlier this week that it had not briefed any of Mr Biden’s transition officials on its nationwide distribution plans, according to one lawmaker, and had no plans to do so by Thursday.

Dr. Celine Gounder, a member of the president-elect’s Covid-19 transition panel, also described the administration’s failure to cooperate with the transition as a “major impediment to rolling out and scaling up the vaccine” in an interview with CNBC.

“The fact that the GSA has not followed through with ascertainment of the election results is really a major impediment to us,” he said, “because we’re not able to be on the inside of these very important discussions in terms of how these different vaccines are going to be distributed.”