WASHINGTON — The Harris campaign has tapped Johannes Abraham for a key role on its presidential transition team, according to a source familiar with the planning.
Abraham is the US Ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and is based in Indonesia. The US official confirmed that Ibrahim will finish his duties in Jakarta in the near future.
In his new role, Abraham is expected to have a small team tasked with running operations for the vice president. Kamala Harris If he defeats the former president after the election, he should start building an administration Donald Trump. The source said the team will not make decisions about personnel in a potential administration or develop policy until after Election Day.
The law firm Covington and Burling LLP, where former US Attorney General Eric Holder works, will help build the transition team. Holder vetted potential running mates for the Harris campaign.
A State Department spokesman said Abraham spent two years as ambassador expanding and deepening ties between the United States and Southeast Asian countries. Before that, he was chief of staff at the National Security Council and oversaw the White House Situation Room.
There are transition teams familiar territory For Abraham. In 2020, he was the executive director of the Biden transition. According to the source, during this period he worked closely with Harris.
Ibrahim’s appointment comes as the General Services Administration prepares to engage the Harris and Trump campaigns in the presidential transition process. A GSA spokeswoman said the agency will offer its services to both transition teams in an Aug. 27 letter.
The next steps include getting the offer in writing and executing a memorandum of understanding to acquire office space in Washington, D.C., and administrative support to get things done. Federal law on presidential transitions sets a September 1 deadline for GSA to enter into formal contracts with presidential transition teams. It’s unclear how that schedule will be affected, given the short time between the offering of services and the start of next month, which falls on the Sunday before a federal holiday.
Trump’s campaign announced last week that it had created a transition team led by Linda McMahon, who heads Trump’s Small Business Administration, and Howard Lutnick, CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
The McMahon and Lutnick option also serves Pushes Trump further away from Project 2025. A collaboration of conservative groups has offered nearly 900 pages of policy proposals and includes a staffing database aimed at building a future Trump White House. Democrats called the proposal extreme and tried to link Trump’s campaign to it. Several former Trump administration staffers are part of the groups behind Project 2025, but McMahon and Lutnick have not joined the effort.
Noting the need for structured presidential transitions, Congress recognized in 1963 that any incoming president should begin work immediately after inauguration, with a team working to fill thousands of appointments within the federal government before a new administration takes over.
Abigail Williams contributed.