White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein is expected to step down a few weeks after the State of the Union.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein, the powerful force at the center of Joe Biden’s first two years in office, is expected to step down weeks after the president’s address to the US Congress, according to several people familiar with his plans.

Klein’s exact timeline has yet to be set, sources said, and he is expected to remain in the West Wing for a period of time to help with a transitional period to replace him, one of the sources said. An address to Congress is scheduled for February 7th.

Klein’s departure came at a difficult time for Biden as the special counsel investigated his handling of classified information after he was vice president, and the president’s administration and family faced new scrutiny from the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. An official familiar with Klein’s plans said his decision to step down was unrelated to an ongoing investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s personal office and Delaware residence, with the decision made before the Special Counsel’s announcement.

Biden is undecided on his next White House chief of staff and is discussing an even wider network of potential replacements, another official said. The official added that the president is known for his prudent approach to making important decisions, especially one as important as the chief of staff.

Klein’s expected departure has been widely discussed in the White House in recent weeks, although those discussions and speculation about who will replace Klein have intensified in recent days. These discussions coincided with the release of misplaced classified documents, and many people familiar with the situation said it was delicate to avoid the incorrect suggestion that Klein’s eventual departure could be somehow related to this development.

The New York Times was the first to report on Klein’s expected departure.

Klein contemplated leaving after the November midterm elections, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said people in the White House were closely watching for clues as to his intentions. Klein has been known to constantly e-mail employees and even check gas prices in the middle of the night, a pace that many of his co-workers found unsustainable in the long run.

Klein himself publicly – and more privately – noted the debilitating and debilitating nature of the situation. But his deep-seated presence in almost every aspect of the West Wing, along with his longstanding relationship with Biden, has prompted some White House officials to persuade him to stay in that position for an extended period of time.

Still, officials are quietly weighing his potential replacements, including Steve Ricchetti, a presidential adviser and one of Biden’s closest advisers for years; Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack; Labor Secretary Marty Walsh; Jeff Zients, former Obama administration official who led Biden’s Covid-19 response operation; and Anita Dunn, a senior adviser who leads White House communications and messaging, among other things.

Dunn has publicly stated that she does not wish to fulfill the role and has repeated it privately, officials said, although an acquaintance said that Dunn had expressed an interest in becoming the first female chief of staff.

Klein’s departure may precede other changes in the West Wing, as senior staff will either switch to the pending re-election campaign or decide to leave the administration after two years. A Zients-led talent scout is currently underway to identify potential replacements for senior positions.

After his departure, Klein will be one of the first Democratic chiefs of staff in recent times, a fact that has not escaped the attention of the people in the White House.

It is hard to overestimate his intense involvement in every aspect of the important decisions made during Biden’s first two years in office. During the first half of the reign, discussions large and small – and everything from political to political issues – not only had Klein’s fingerprints, but, most often, to one degree or another, his direct participation. When lawmakers, political allies, and political advocates have been asked for the past two years who their immediate contact in the West Wing is on any given issue, they have often tended to respond with one word: “Ron.”

The veteran politician’s tenure was marked by a number of key White House legislative achievements, as well as his fondness for tweeting his opinions on various topics at any time of the day.

Klein’s expected decision marks one of the first high-profile departures from an administration characterized by low turnover during its first two years.

Biden announced that Klein would take the top job on November 11, 2020, days after the presidential election.

On Friday, Klein marked the second anniversary of Biden’s inauguration with a celebratory email and cake.

“Today, in the middle of this term for the President and Vice President, we celebrate not only WHAT was achieved, but HOW it was achieved: through teamwork, cooperation, mutual respect and a lot of hard work. This team has done so many historic things and done them in a historic way, being part of the most diverse and talented White House staff ever,” Klein told White House aides in an email obtained by CNN.

Klein pointed to jobs and economic growth, the stabilization of the pandemic, action to combat climate change, moves to fight racism and promote justice, and efforts to defend democracy in the US and abroad as examples of their success.

“I am in awe of what this team has done and how you have done it. So this afternoon I’m giving everyone a cake to celebrate our success and all your hard work,” he said in an email.

Klein worked with Biden in the early 1990s as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chief adviser, while the Delaware Democrat served as the committee’s chairman. Two years later, Klein led President Bill Clinton’s team to win the confirmation of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

He later became Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff in his second term, and although he left in 1999 due to a feud between Gore and Clinton allies, he returned to the Tennessee Democratic presidential campaign a year later and became general counsel for his upcoming recount. . of what ultimately became George W. Bush’s victory in Florida with 537 votes in 2000, which resulted in the White House being handed over to the Republicans.

Klein then worked as a lobbyist and political adviser and participated in John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. He reprized his role as vice president’s chief of staff at the start of President Barack Obama’s administration, again working for Biden.

He left the White House in 2011 to head an investment firm but returned in 2014 when Obama named him his Ebola Response Coordinator, a skill set he used while overseeing the administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic when Biden stepped in. to the post.

(The-CNN-Wire and 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner company. All rights reserved.)

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