Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren When the White House brought IAN SAMS in last year as a special assistant to the president and spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, it was in anticipation of Republicans winning the House and launching aggressive oversight investigations. But it’s been the president’s self-inflicted political trauma that has thrust Sams, a communications strategist and capable political bomb thrower, into the role of sacrificial lamb. Amid the continued drip of revelations over Biden’s possession of classified documents and rising criticism from frustrated fellow Democrats, The Ian Sams Project has been activated. Suddenly all over the (left-leaning) airwaves, Sams is pushing talking points and attempting to reframe uncomfortable questions, taking the heat from frustrated interviewers and, the White House hopes, taking some of the pressure off his colleagues. “There’s no question that Ian is going to take his lumps in the media and it might cause a little pain in the short term,” said LIS SMITH, a Democratic communications strategist. “But this is a strategy that will pay off for them in the long term and could help really minimize this as an electoral issue for 2024. The more proactive this White House is, the more they’ll look like they have nothing to hide.” Since news broke Saturday evening that the Justice Department spent more than 12 hours searching Biden’s Wilmington home and found six additional items with classified markings, Sams has appeared on MSNBC’s airwaves four times. He started by joining ALICIA MENENDEZ’ “American Voices” program via Skype that night, followed by an in-studio appearance with JONATHAN CAPEHART on “The Sunday Show.” On Monday afternoon, he held a conference call to brief reporters — the second one in as many weeks. More than 160 journalists logged on to the 37-minute Zoom, as Sams took questions off-camera from 14 reporters. “The strategy is not that the White House isn’t answering questions; it’s just to shift it outside of the briefing room,” said JENNIFER PALMIERI, a former Obama administration communications director who remains close to many in the Biden White House. “Even if you're not able to provide a lot of answers, it’s beneficial to exhaust the questions, to have people repeatedly hear the theory of the case and understand why they're not able to answer more questions. That's important and illuminating.” Sams’ television hits offered something of a counter to high-profile Sunday morning appearances by Democratic Sens. DICK DURBIN of Illinois and JOE MANCHIN of West Virginia, who both criticized Biden’s handling of the classified materials and the political crisis it created. But Sams’ workmanlike recitation of the president’s talking points hasn’t seemed to satisfy a group of interviewers typically sympathetic to the Biden White House. “Morning Joe” co-host MIKA BRZEZINSKI let loose an audible sigh midway through Sam’s 12-minute interview Monday from the North Lawn when Sams, emphasizing how Biden “believes in the rule of law,” continued to assert that answering questions about how this could have happened and the nature of the classified materials themselves could interfere with the ongoing DOJ probe. “Does the DOJ need to tell the president why the president has classified documents in his home?” co-host JOE SCARBOROUGH responded after one of Sams’ elisions. “I don't understand that.” Scarborough, however, did credit Sams immediately following the interview by praising his performance in the face of tough questions to the other co-hosts on set. "People may not like it," he said, "but that right there's how you do it. If you're a spokesperson, that's how you do it." Sams’ bumpy entrance on to the scene of an evolving political crisis has exposed the dearth of administration aides and allies capable of carrying its message publicly. It’s a void that’s been worsened by concerns that exist around letting the president speak for himself, especially now that he is the subject of a special counsel investigation. According to three people with knowledge of private conversations, Biden often grouses to top aides about not having enough people defending him on television. Despite those complaints, top aides have opted not to stand up a more robust surrogate operation of high-profile Democrats outside the White House to deliver the administration’s message on cable television more routinely. The issue could grow more pronounced in a couple weeks when chief of staff RON KLAIN departs. Klain was one of the more public of Biden’s aides, and certainly its most prominent tweeter, though he hasn’t mentioned the documents investigation in his feed. Press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, for her part, has struggled to deflate the story in the briefing room. Her statement earlier this month that the searches for documents were “complete” — she said it six times at one briefing — came just hours before Biden’s outside attorney confirmed that more documents had been found and more than a week before Saturday’s 12-plus hour search of the president’s Wilmington home. At the podium Monday, Jean-Pierre made the administration’s new strategy — letting Sams take more incoming – crystal clear. Directing questions about the investigation to him, she noted that her “colleague in the White House Counsel’s Office [had] been pretty diligent on taking questions these last couple of days.” MESSAGE US —Are you Biden’s personal attorney BOB BAUER? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. WHAT YOU WROTE: You had a lot of thoughts on Friday’s font-focused newsletter. Like, a lot. It was great hearing from so many readers. MOISES BENHABIB, a former State Department official with experience in the office that controlled the style guide, wrote in to say he welcomes the department’s shift to 14-point Calibri for all official communications, a sign of Secretary ANTONY BLINKEN’s sincerity in addressing issues of accessibility: “Although I would've insisted on Garamond since it's built for digital devices personally.” He added the following: Although there is no universal standard for format government wide - there is an interagency standard for executive secretary memos and correspondence which is Times New Roman 14 pt. font. (I was the backup State Interagency Coordinator). We at State have also pleaded with our distinguished colleagues at the WH to change from courier new, alas they like to mimic the typewriters. Fun fact - the last four Secretaries of State have agreed on Times New Roman 12 pt font, except Secretary Blinken who increased it to 14 pt soon after taking office, headers and footers were also decreased to 10 pt TNR from 12. State is seen as a model in the interagency and many agencies copy/use the style guide so wouldn't be surprised if Calabri spread - especially through the USG Executive Secretaries council.” KATHE RICH, another WWPB reader, wrote in that she is “a fan of Georgia for the same reasons as [the Department of Veterans Affairs], and concur that use of a Serif typeface for headings and san-serif for the body of the text provides a classic, clean, and very legible page. I can think of some entities for whom Comic Sans would be appropriate, though…”
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