US president Joe Biden is expected to name Jeff Zients, who ran the administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, as his next chief of staff, according to sources.
Mr Biden’s current top aide, Ron Klain, is preparing to leave the job in the coming weeks.
Since serving as Covid-19 response coordinator, Mr Zients has returned to the White House in a low-profile position to work on staffing matters for the remainder of Mr Biden’s first term.
The change at the highest levels of senior staff comes as Mr Biden passes his two-year mark in office and pivots to a defensive stance against a House Republican majority hungry to investigate his administration’s actions and his family.
The White House remains mired in controversy over discoveries of classified documents at Mr Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at his former institute in Washington, with the latest tranche of found records disclosed on Saturday evening.
Mr Biden, 80, is also preparing to launch his re-election campaign in the coming weeks, bolstered by a string of legislative accomplishments in the first two years of his presidency when Democrats controlled both chambers of Capitol Hill.
He is confronting a Republican presidential field that is far from fully formed but for now is led by former president Donald Trump, whom Mr Biden defeated in 2020.
The president’s main sphere of advisers, in addition to Mr Zients, on politics and legislation will continue to include presidential counsellor Steve Ricchetti, senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell, and Jen O’Malley Dillon and Bruce Reed, who are deputy chiefs of staff.
Mr Klain will remain in Mr Biden’s political orbit, according to a person familiar with his plans – not unlike the role played by Cedric Richmond, who was the president’s first director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and now is a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee.
The outgoing chief of staff was also known to be friendly with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But some liberal critics of Mr Zients swiftly went on the attack against the appointment even before it was official, highlighting in particular his private-sector ties.
Jeff Hauser, the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive group that advocates for liberal appointees in government, said the selection of Mr Zients as the top White House aide did not jibe with Mr Biden’s “Scranton Joe” political image.
Mr Hauser said: “Unfortunately, Zients is a veteran of private equity, rapacious health care providers, and Big Tech, which sets up a fundamental question that could determine Biden’s political future: Will a Zients-led executive branch pursue the unpopular misconduct of people like Jeffrey Zients?
“It would be against Zients’ character to pursue corporate lawbreaking, but it is also the only way Biden can retain the mantle of populist against the likes of (Florida governor Ron) DeSantis and Trump.”
Mr Zients, vice chairman of Biden’s transition operation after his November 2020 election, brings significant managerial expertise in government and the private sector.
He was the director of the National Economic Council during Barack Obama’s administration and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.
