The The Trump transition team signed an agreement with the current administration that will unlock access to resources to advance the transition process, but the Trump team said they will not sign another crucial transition agreement with the General Services Administration that would make the transition more secure and transparent, the Biden The White House said this on Tuesday.
Biden White House officials said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has yet to agree on a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department that will allow the processing of security clearance requests.
The General Services Administration is an independent federal agency responsible for federal office space, as well as supporting transition teams and presidential inauguration efforts, and is required by the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 to report regularly to Congress on the status of transition planning.
Since September — well before the election — the White House and the agency have asked Trump’s transition team to sign both a White House memorandum of understanding and a General Services Administration memorandum of understanding, as both Republicans and Democrats have done in previous transitions, White said. Spokesperson of the House of Representatives Saloni Sharma. The Trump team announced on Tuesday that it had signed the agreement with the White House.
“After completing the selection process of his incoming Cabinet, President-elect Trump will enter the next phase of his administration’s transition by executing a Memorandum of Understanding with President Joe Biden’s White House,” said the new White House chief of staff House, Susie Wiles. “This engagement will enable our intended Cabinet nominees to make critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams in every department and service, and complete the orderly transition of power.”
The signing of the agreement with the White House gives authorized members of Trump’s team access to White House and agency facilities, information and employees.
But since the Trump team refuses to sign a similar agreement with the General Services Administration, office space, secure email addresses and funding for transition staff and other activities will not be provided by GSA, Sharma said. She said the White House will work to protect nonpublic information and prevent conflicts of interest, despite the lack of a signed memo.
And while White House officials say progress has been made toward a memorandum of understanding between the Trump team and the Justice Department, White House officials say no DOJ agreement has been signed. The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the processing requests for security clearances for incoming government officials who need access to briefing materials and national security information, and those approvals cannot occur without a signed memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the Department of Justice.
The Justice Department, not the White House or the General Services Administration, is responsible for security clearances for transition personnel.
“To date, the DOJ MOU has not been signed, but progress has been made toward an agreement,” a Justice Department spokesperson said. “The Department of Justice is ready to process security clearance requests for those requiring access to briefing materials and national security information as soon as the MOU is signed, which we hope will happen very soon.”
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center who focuses on presidential transitions, said the terms of the memo of understanding Wiles outlined reflected in her assessment an attempt by the Trump transition team to protect against transparency.
“They’re making it up as they go because it’s never been done this way before,” she said.
While Wiles has suggested that not signing the General Services Administration document will save taxpayers money, there are strings attached to using taxpayer money — specifically greater requirements for transparency and documentation, Dunn Tenpas said.
“If you use government funds, the memorandum with GSA requires that you then report all donations to the transition, and they cannot exceed $5,000 per person,” she said. “It’s two things: first, they want the privacy of who their donors are and if they don’t accept the GSA money, they don’t have to make anything public – and second, they have a few supporters, like Miriam Adelson and Elon. Musk, they’re billionaires… So this idea of getting $7 million from the government to jump-start your transition is just not as attractive as it might have been for the Harris campaign, but I guess, more importantly, they probably won’t.’ I don’t want people to know so-and-so gave $2 billion to the transition.”
Additionally, government servers — unlike, say, private Gmail accounts during a transition — are more secure and subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act, she said. FOIA allows citizens to request communications and other data.
“GSA wants them to use the computers for the government because they think they have more security within their networks, and they’re afraid that if they do government business about moving to a private network, it could be more easily hacked,” says he. said Dunn Tenpas. “They say things like the transition already have existing security and information protection built in, which means we don’t need additional government and bureaucratic oversight. But the other reason is that if they log into the government computers, all those emails are subject to FOIA requests.”
and Robert Legare contributed to this report.
