Trump is sending in loyalists to monitor Biden transition meetings: report

President Donald Trump has finally started allowing meetings to take place between federal agencies and President-elect Joe Biden's transition team -- but not without some of his loyal cronies present.

The New York Times reports that "loyalists to President Trump have blocked transition meetings at some government agencies and are sitting in on discussions at other agencies between career civil servants" and the Biden transition team.

The result of this, writes the Times, has been a "chill" in some conversations.

"At the Environmental Protection Agency, political appointees have joined virtually every discussion between career staff members and Mr. Biden’s team, monitoring conversations on climate change, scientific research and other topics," reports the Times.

Experts who spoke with the Times said they were wary of Trump officials being present at the meetings in part because the president still has yet to formally concede that he lost the 2020 election.

“The norm is that the political people are not involved in the nuts and bolts of this,” explained Michael E. Herz, a professor of administrative law at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, who said that Trump team's goal seems to be to "milk their authority as long as they can and disrupt the new administration as much as they can."