Trump's team puts off transition traditions

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With a full slate of Cabinet nominees selected, and a roster of White House advisers announced, President-elect Donald Trump officially launched the presidential transition last week by signing an agreement with the White House that allows for the transfer of information between the outgoing and incoming administrations.

But Trump and his transition team are bucking some of the decades-old ethics and security protocols outlined in the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 — opting to privately bankroll Trump’s transition effort instead of accepting federal funding for office space, equipment and staff via the General Services Administration. Trump's team has also so far avoided entering into an agreement with the FBI to conduct background checks on nominees.

Government watchdog groups and ethics lawyers contend that forgoing the traditional process raises transparency questions about who is funding the Trump transition effort and whether the donations provide those donors with more access and sway. Trump's transition team said in a statement that donors will eventually be disclosed and that the intent is to create "a self-sufficient organization."

"The Transition will not utilize taxpayer funding for costs related to the transition, which is consistent with President Trump’s commitment to save taxpayers' hard-earned money," Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a statement the transition team released on Tuesday.

iles said the transition team signed an agreement with the White House on Tuesday to begin the process of allowing transition staff to connect with government agencies for briefings ahead of Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. But her statement made clear that the team opted against entering into an agreement with the General Services Administration, or GSA.

"The Transition already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight," Wiles said.

Government ethics attorney Brett Kappel told Newsday that if Trump’s team would have signed the traditional agreement with GSA, he could have still fundraised separately for the transition effort. But Kappel said those donations would have been capped at $5,000 per donor, and donors would have been disclosed on the GSA website.

By forgoing the traditional agreement, there is no funding cap, said Kappel, who works with the Washington-based law firm Harmon Curran. He said there is also no donor-reporting requirement other than an IRS Form 990, which does not require donor names and amounts be listed.

"Essentially if they don't sign these agreements, the American public will know virtually nothing about how the transition was funded for a year," Kappel said in a phone interview. "If the transition is being run out of [Trump’s Palm Beach estate] Mar-a-Lago, it may be that the largest recipient of funds from the transition is the president himself."

Change from 2016
After his 2016 victory, Trump did sign the traditional agreement with the General Services Administration, but instead of tapping into federal workspace, he ran much of his transition effort from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. The agency has said none of the $7 million in federal funds that Trump was entitled to at the time went to reimburse him for office space.

In 2016, Trump’s transition team set up a fundraising arm — Trump for America — which raised $6.5 million for the transition, according to a memo from the organization obtained by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity through a public-records request. The memo, written to the GSA, provided a detailed list of donors — from corporations like AT&T and Microsoft, to moguls like Robert Mercer and the late Sheldon Adelson — but only provided broad categories for how the money was spent. The memo notes $258,000 went to rent and utilities.

Over the course of his first term in office, the Secret Service paid Trump’s private properties — including his Mar-a-Lago resort and his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf resort — nearly $2 million for rooms and services used by his security detail, according to a 2022 analysis of public records by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The Presidential Transition Act was established to provide nonpartisan protocols for an orderly transition of power, but there is no enforcement mechanism or requirement for a candidate to participate, said Meena Bose, director of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency.

"If the President Elect's transition team doesn’t want those services, which has never happened before, they can’t really be forced to take it," Bose said. "We've never had a situation of trying to force a candidate to participate."

FBI checks
The Trump transition team also has yet to enter into an agreement with the FBI to conduct background checks of the nominees ahead of the Senate confirmation process.

Trump has long expressed distrust of the agency, which previously investigated his 2016 campaign and his handling of classified documents upon leaving office, and Bose said he could be waiting until he installs his own FBI director and staff.

On Saturday night, Trump said he would nominate his longtime adviser Kash Patel to be his FBI director.

The current director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump and is in the middle of a 10-year term.

"After the inauguration, he'll have the authority to make decisions about background checks," Bose said of Trump.

The Trump transition team did not respond to an email seeking comment on when or if it will execute an agreement with the FBI for background checks.