Former President Donald Trump is considering his own approach to presidential transition planning, which could dramatically delay his takeover of the federal government if he wins in November.
Trump’s transition team must sign two more agreements with the federal government to receive transition funding and planning assistance and to share information — a break from modern precedent. Instead, transition co-chairs Linda McMahon, who served as a small business administrator in the Trump administration, and investor and Republican megadonor Howard Lutnick are plowing ahead with their own processes for vetting potential political appointees and preparing policy plans.
The decision not to accept federal aid allows them to raise unlimited funds without disclosing their donors while avoiding oversight from federal bureaucrats who deeply distrust Trump and his advisers. But if Trump wins the election and drags his feet on signing the deal with the White House, it will limit the information he and his team can access to understand current federal operations and challenges.
While the Trump transition team insists it will be ready to hit the ground running if the former president wins, experts say it is likely to further slow its preparations, already far behind schedule, to take over the executive branch and its millions of employees will postpone.
Not working with federal transition coordinators “adds another level of difficulty to executing the transition because there are so many points of interaction with the executive branch,” said Rich Bagger, former chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former executive director of Trump’s transition before the 2016 election. There is all that “serious work that needs to be done and that, it seemed to me, was facilitated by being… fully integrated into the transition structure.”
In addition to simply planning the policy agenda of the future president, a presidential transition is charged with identifying candidates to fill thousands of vacancies, preparing plans to run the federal government’s vast agencies, and applying for security clearances so that staff may receive sensitive information.
The Presidential Transition Act aims to facilitate a smooth transition of power between administrations, establish guidelines for the transition planning of the incumbent administration, and identify various forms of assistance that the General Services Administration can provide to presidential transitions and, after elections , the elected president. . The General Services Administration is expected to reach an agreement with the candidate teams on September 1 on the type of support and facilities it will provide before the elections. The White House is expected to reach a deal with candidate teams on Oct. 1 on post-election agency access, including a staff ethics plan.
Under the current system, campaigns are not required to accept the aid, but so far no one has refused it.
While Vice President Kamala Harris’ transition team has struck deals with the federal government to get help both before and after the election — including office space and funding for current transition planning — the Trump transition has blown through both deadlines to deal with the federal government to enter into discussions. government.
A person involved in the Trump transition said they are exploring a “spectrum” of legal options for working with the current administration, including whether to sign the GSA agreements, and the potential implications.
McMahon and Lutnick, the co-chairs of the Trump transition, said in a statement that discussions with the federal government are ongoing and they continue to make plans to staff the next administration and craft policy initiatives.
“The Trump-Vance transition attorneys continue to work constructively with the Biden-Harris administration attorneys on all agreements contemplated in the Presidential Transition Act,” they said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false and deliberately misleading.”
Saloni Sharma, a White House spokesperson, confirmed in a statement: “To date, we have entered into an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with the Harris transition team outlining such circumstances. The Federal Transition Coordinator is actively working with the Trump transition team to complete an MOU.”
And Channing Grate, a spokesperson for GSA, said they are “prepared to provide services to the Trump transition team once an MOU is executed and services accepted,” which would include things like “office space, equipment, communications and IT services ‘.
There are a number of reasons why the Trump transition team may not want to accept GSA’s aid or funding. Resources such as free office space, which are provided to the campaigns under the GSA agreement, are less valuable if people are used to working remotely. And by not accepting funding from the federal government, the team can collect unlimited contributions from private donors without revealing their identities. That money can be spent on salaries of transition employees, who have often worked on a voluntary basis in recent years.
By not signing the agreement with the White House, which provides access to the agencies, the Trump transition could also avoid filing an ethics pledge, the requirements of which are set out in the Presidential Transition Act.
McMahon and Lutnick noted in their statement that their staff has already signed “a robust ethics pledge” they drafted under the provisions of the Presidential Transition Act. One of the requirements outlined in the Trump-Vance Transition code of ethics, which was first reported by the New York Times, is that anyone who has engaged in “regulated lobbying activities regarding such issues, as defined by the Lobbying Disclosure Act, within the preceding twelve months” will be excluded from participating in the transition.
The Harris transition requires people who registered as federal lobbyists within the past year to get approval from the general counsel’s office.
Trump allies also harbor distrust of the executive branch, according to two people familiar with their thinking. During Trump’s transition in 2016, it was alleged that Special Counsel Robert Mueller unlawfully obtained their communications from the GSA during his investigation into Russian election interference.
Ken Nahigian, who became executive director of the 2016 Trump transition after the election, argued that the existing GSA process was extremely burdensome and restrictive, without many benefits. Raising money was particularly difficult with the $5,000 limit on contributions, and the GSA also required donors’ disclosure of the transition, he added. Nahigian has recommended that those around the Trump campaign or transition reject the GSA’s support.
“You must follow all GSA rules to the hilt; it is very burdensome,” Nahigian said, adding, “People cost money.”
He also argued that there is still sufficient time to coordinate the 2024 transition. Those involved in planning a Trump transition — something the former president is superstitious about — have also expressed confidence in their ability to put together a menu of policies and political appointments.
“On January 20, you will see the greatest talent ever walking on the field,” Lutnick, who oversees the staff vetting process, told Bloomberg News on Wednesday. “We already have 5,000 people that we know who have been backed by the best people like Ross Perot in energy and Chuck Schwab in finance, and everyone. They help and build the best team for Donald Trump.”
But Trump’s earlier transition to the White House illustrates the risks of failing to coordinate with the administration. Under Christie and Bagger, the 2016 transition signed its first agreement with the federal government months before the election and worked to obtain security clearances and set up Office of Government Ethics processes for potential nominees, Bagger said.
In addition, the GSA provided important information technology for cyber defense, he recalled.
GSA also provides the transition team with government email addresses. Federal agencies are not required to share information with dotcom or dotorg email addresses, whose security may be unknown, explained Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition, a nonpartisan resource for presidential candidates.
“We have already seen hacking attempts in this election cycle, and of course the DOT Gov addresses also help federal agencies understand that these individuals you are communicating with are indeed official representatives of the candidate,” she said. “If the candidate doesn’t have DOT gov email addresses, should federal agencies only brief in person? Should they offer some sort of standalone computers that aren’t connected to a network? Should they provide some kind of paper binders full of material?”
For Trump’s 2016 transition, complications began after Election Day, when Christie was ousted as chief of the transition team. The new transition officials failed to complete the paperwork for the second transition agreement with the government until mid-November, allowing it to receive briefings and information from federal agencies. A former Trump administration official recalled how the initial White House was particularly slow to hire and had a “bare-bones” operation for a few months.
Transition experts warn that the launch of the next Trump White House could be in serious jeopardy if the Trump transition continues to delay or possibly refuse to sign agreements in the months before the inauguration.
“They will take the stage with almost grotesque inabilities,” said Terry Sullivan, executive director of the White House Transition Project and professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They will come in with incredible arrogance, and so they will be incredibly ignorant of what they need to know.”
