President-elect Donald Trump is so far not abiding by a federal law on presidential transitions, and his noncompliance is kneecapping his own incoming administration.
That's according to a recent report by the New York Times' Ken Bensinger. The former and now-incoming president has yet to submit a legally required pledge to avoid ethical conflicts of interest. And because he has yet to do so, this means no one on his transition team can physically access the 438 different federal agencies between now and January 20. Additionally, neither Trump nor his team can get security clearances from President Joe Biden's administration needed to have national security briefings and access classified national intelligence.
This requirement was included in a 2019 amendment to the bipartisan Presidential Transition Act, which lays out the complex process in which an outgoing administration assists the incoming president with the transition of power. The Times noted that the law was "born in part out of concerns about ethical issues during the first Trump administration."
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Max Stier, who is the head of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service (which assists the presidential transition process), told Bensinger that this "could leave the country vulnerable at a critical moment."
“The consequences are severe,” Stier told the Times. “It would not be possible to be ready to govern on Day 1.”
Trump's own conflicts of interest are staggering, with the anti-corruption watchdog group Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) identifying approximately 3,400 such conflicts from Trump's first administration. This includes him hosting members of foreign governments at his privately owned properties, like the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC prior to its sale in 2022.
Another example of the depth of Trump's ethical conflicts came to light In a January 2024 report issued by the House Oversight Committee, which found that his businesses received approximately $8 million from foreign governments while he occupied the White House. The report's authors argued that this was a blatant violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign government without prior permission from Congress.
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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) pointed out that Trump's transition team failed to meet a September 1 deadline to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration that makes $7.2 million available for the presidential transition process. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris each submitted their paperwork ahead of that deadline, which requires public disclosure of all donors to a transition effort and caps donations at $5,000 apiece.
"He’s completely thumbing his nose at the idea that all Americans are participating in the same basic public enterprise," Raskin told the Times.
As of Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed that the Biden administration had reached out to the Trump transition team, who said "they have an intent" to submit the legally required paperwork. However, they did not indicate when they would be doing so. Trump transition team co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon issued a statement saying that "all transition staff have signed a robust ethics pledge as a requirement of their participation" but gave no further details.
Click here to read Bensinger's full article in the Times (subscription required).
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