Trump Campaign Is Blowing Off Presidential Transitional Deadlines
American presidents are inaugurated in January, but the process of coordinating the change of the guard between an outgoing and incoming administration begins weeks before Americans cast their ballots in November. Nothing about this election cycle has been normal, but Donald Trump is breaking with yet another campaign expectation by refusing to participate in presidential transition preparations.
According to a Wednesday report from The New York Times, the former president has missed two major deadlines and failed to sign three documents necessary for the transition — two of which are required by federal law.
Trump remains insistent that he will reclaim the White House in November, and exact vengeance on those he believes stole a second administration from him in 2020. So why is he skirting the presidential transition process? It’s likely because signing the required documents would bind him to financial and ethical guidelines that he would rather avoid.
According to the Times, Trump’s campaign did not sign a General Services Administration agreement — an accord that would grant the campaign access to workspace, tech support, and federal funding to aid in the transition — by the Sept. 1 deadline. If agreed to, the campaign would be required to disclose private donations to their transition fund and place a $5,000 limit on individual contributions. Without the voluntary disclosure agreement, money collected to fund Trump’s transition is essentially being dumped into an oversight black hole, as the Federal Election Commission does not oversee transition funds.
The Trump campaign missed another deadline last week, neglecting to sign paperwork from the White House that would allow members of Trump’s staff to receive national security information and classified documents ahead of the election. This second agreement can only be enacted if the Trump campaign also signs an ethics plan to mitigate conflicts of interest when hiring new staff, which they so far have refused to do.
According to the Times, the Trump campaign transition team has made staff sign their own ethics documents but the documents contain far more relaxed requirements for former lobbyists and representatives from foreign governments than the White House.
On Thursday, a report from CNN confirmed that Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has signed the General Services Agreement and White House ethics plan.
One administration official, who served under both Biden and former President Barack Obama, told CNN that the current transition process is similar to the Trump campaign’s refusal to engage with Obama’s staff during the 2016 transition.
“We were waiting for the phone calls [from the Trump team], waiting for people to show up, and they never did. They never took our memos,” they said of Trump’s first term, adding that the current team surrounding the former president has “not shown any indication they want to use anything that we provide to them.”
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