The White House has experienced unprecedented departures under President Joe Biden. According to a new report, First Lady Jill Biden’s office is now undergoing massive turnover as a top aide has departed.
Rory Brosius, who has been running the Joining Forces project, announced she will be leaving her post in a statement to the military community, according to NBC report. Sheila Casey, the wife of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, will take over when Brosius officially exits at the end of March.
“As a young military spouse walking into the East Wing to intern for Joining Forces in August of 2012 to joining the Biden-Harris Administration on day one to stand up Joining Forces, this has been the journey of a lifetime,” Brosius said in her message.
Jill Biden said Brosius led the project “with grace, compassion, and determination to support America’s military and veteran families, caregivers, and survivors. Rory has done an extraordinary job as Executive Director, doing the hard policy work that matters. Joe and I are grateful for her dedication over the last ten years.”
A Brookings Institution study found that the turnover rate of Biden’s top-level aides is at the second highest since former President Ronald Reagan was in office. The study found that 21 “A-Team staffers” were gone after two years.
The Brookings Institution report notes that Vice President Kamala Harris’ office has had extremely high turnover.
Harris, in particular, has had difficulty retaining staffers, reportedly due to an abusive work environment.
The Washington Post published a report that included interviews with then-current and former staffers, many on the condition of anonymity, who gave some candid responses to what it is like working for Harris.
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” a former staffer said to The Post. “With Kamala, you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.”
Last year, a report said that some staffers believed her office was abusive.
“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” a person that Politico claims knows how her office works, said. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.”
The report added that members of President Biden’s staff have noticed and are concerned about how members of Harris’ team are treated.
What’s more concerning is that reports have emerged that Jill Biden could be positioning herself as the commander-in-chief.
Fox News opinion columnist Liz Peek suggested in an op-ed that as President Joe Biden’s mental faculties decline, the first lady could become more of the de facto president.
The columnist said that after the departure of Chief of Staff Ron Klain in January, a power vacuum was created in the West Wing and Jill Biden has become an increasingly more powerful presence.
“She weighs in regularly on the president’s schedule and presentation and has frequently been caught on camera steering Joe away from pesky reporters. An embarrassing video recently captured yet another instance of the president refusing to address questions from the press – on this occasion about the FBI searching Biden’s home. It occurred at a Lunar New Year event, where Jill hustled Joe away from questioners and guided him onto the stage, holding his hand and issuing instructions,” Peek wrote in her opinion piece.
“Dr. Jill has apparently become more assertive. According to an NBC News analysis last fall, Jill has carried Joe’s message to more places more frequently than Joe himself. NBC reports she wields ‘unparalleled influence’ in the White House. Last year she burst into a meeting of Joe’s top aides, furious that they had allowed him to take questions at a news conference for nearly two hours. She evidently does not think Joe can stand up to two hours of inquisition,” the report stated.
