Page:CTRL0000034609 - Transcribed Interview of Kashyap Pramod Patel, (December 9, 2021).pdf/114

114 conduct the transition process. And this was a team of, you know, 25 high-level DOD leadership folks including the Deputy Secretary of Defense, who was more the day-to-day lead on the transition than myself. And so we had many, many, many SVTCs and meetings on this—sorry, video teleconferences, on this. So I probably shaped some of those when the discussions came up.

But as this part of kind of investigating kind of the transition aspect that happened at this agency and others, this presence of the general counsel and this card being read by general counsel's representative was viewed as not was viewed as unusual requirement as part of a transition process.

So I'm not familiar in that level of detail, whether or not it was or wasn't unusual. The recommendation was made that that was appropriate, given the amount of information and people we were dealing with. We gave, from my understanding, the largest Presidential transition in DOD history was conducted under our watch. And so, you know, I relied on the career officials to make recommendations, and I usually went with them.

So, just so I'm clear, it wasn't your recommendation to have this presence or this card—

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying if it was—you know, I'm saying there was many discussions on this and other matters, and what happened was we usually just came to an agreement. Whether it was my independent recommendation or somebody at OGC first say said, "Hey, maybe we want to do this," I don't know what instigated the matter, but I do remember it being a part of the transition.

But it wasn't relayed to you at any time that this was a challenge in terms of—from the perspective of the Biden-Harris team, that the presence of the GC during each of these interviews or a GC representative—