By the end of the week, the White House is mandated by federal law to begin planning with Joe Biden for a possible transition of power, should the Democrat defeat Donald Trump in November. But some Democrats are raising concerns that the administration will not cooperate with the former vice president, worried that a White House with a propensity for disregarding democratic norms will not transfer power peacefully. “They’re a ‘let’s burn the house down on the way out’ kind of crowd,” John Podesta, co-chair of former President Barack Obama’s 2008 transition team, told NBC News. “I’d like to think it was different, but there’s nothing to indicate that they would play it straight.”

“One of the challenges will be, which I think with Trump you have to anticipate, is what if he doesn’t accept the results?” Podesta continued.

By law, the Trump administration needs to begin preparing for a possible transition of power by May 3. So far, Trump officials say they will do so. “We are doing everything that needs to be done for presidential transition,” an administration official said. But given the president’s autocratic tendencies, along with his well-documented refusal to accept the results even of the election he won in 2016, Democrats have raised alarms that he could somehow undermine November’s contest or even use the coronavirus pandemic as a pretense to delay it. “Mark my words,” Biden said last week. “I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”

The Biden campaign, which told NBC News it has yet to hear from the administration, has begun making transition plans of its own, with the presumptive nominee not only in the process of selecting a running mate, but putting together a transition team and the beginnings of a Cabinet. “Sounds presumptuous,” Biden said at a virtual fundraiser this month. “But it has to happen and that’s why the transition team is already being put together.”

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