Donald Trump finished rounding out his Cabinet and top White House positions over the weekend, but his team has yet to sign the ethics and transparency agreements that the federal government needs for a traditional transition.
A Trump spokesman said they continue to ‘constructively engage’ with the Biden-Harris administration, but watchdogs warn that delays could cause problems next year when the new team takes charge.
It means the basics of the transition cannot yet begin, such as deploying ‘landing teams’ of appointees to department or even requesting FBI background checks for nominees.
Three senators raised the alarm with Politico, saying that it could prevent key nominees getting confirmed.
‘If there is a lack of proper investigation into a nominee, I don’t think [the Senate Armed Services Committee] would allow the nomination to move forward,’ Sen. Tim Kaine, a senior Democratic member of the panel, told the website.
Trump moved quickly to appoint his Cabinet, drawing positive comparisons with 2016 when no-one expected him to win.
However, other aspects of the transition have stalled. He has yet to cooperate with the White House Correspondents Association in drawing up a transition pool of reporters to cover his events.
And his senior figures have yet to sign the government agreements that allow them to work with agencies.
Donald Trump has been holed up at Mar-a-Lago since winning the election, building his administration. He is seen here with House Speaker Mike Johnson
Trump picked RFK Jr t o head Health and Human Services, but his advisers have been rebuffed in their attempts to coordinate with the department
It means that when advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contacted the Health and Human Services Department after he was named to lead the massive agency, their requests for meetings were reportedly rebuffed.
It leaves Trump without access to anything that isn’t public, such as classified national security information, details of U.S. involvement in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as conversations with allies.
Nor is the team able to use secure government servers for communications.
None of that worries Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago.
‘He picked his Cabinet in record time,’ said a source familiar with the thinking. ‘This is all going just the way he wants it.’
But Valerie Smith Boyd, the director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service, said there was no precedent for a transition without signing the usual memoranda of understanding.
‘The main thing that it says is that the members of the transition team will be bound by an ethics agreement that ensures that they’re using information appropriately, that they limit the use of lobbyists and foreign agents, and that individuals who leave the transition and go back to the private sector won’t use this information for personal gain,’ she told Politico.
It marks a contrast to 2016, when Trump’s team signed all the paperwork before Election Day, as Joe Biden did in 2020, and Kamala Harris did this time around.
Trump transition spokesman Brian Hughes said: ‘The Trump-Vance transition lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.
‘We will update you once a decision is made.’
Source: politics.einnews.com…
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