Donald Trump’s team has reportedly been dragging its feet on key transition planning paperwork in coordination with the Biden administration, potentially hampering a smooth start to Trump’s return to the White House.
According to The Associated Press, Trump’s team has not yet signed any agreements to begin the formal transition process with the Biden White House, which should take place on October 1. It also has not signed an agreement with the General Services Administration, originally scheduled to take place on September 1, which provides logistics services and funds for the transition.
As NPR reported:
The agreements contain ethical requirements, including safeguards against conflicts of interest and fundraising restrictions. Trump’s team has missed the deadline for signing the agreements and says they are still negotiating the terms.
Under the Presidential Transition Act, both major party nominees are expected to sign the agreements before the elections to support a quick transition of power. The legislation was passed in 2022 in an effort to prevent a repeat of 2020, when Trump delayed the transition process as part of his election denial.
Trump could still be inaugurated as president in January 2025 regardless of whether his team signs those agreements. But his administration will not be willing to take on governance “in a way that is safe for us,” Max Stier, executive director of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that has supported past transitions, told NPR .
“The consequences are serious,” Stier also told The New York Times. “It would not be possible to be ready to govern on day one.”
In late October, just days before the election, Representative Jamie Raskin urged the Trump campaign to sign the agreements, saying in a letter that without them “federal agencies will likely be unable to safely and effectively communicate with your staff. , which will jeopardize ‘the orderly transfer of executive power’ and threaten our national security.”
Trump’s transition team, led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Trump’s former head of the Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, said in October that they expected to sign these agreements but have not yet done so. Lutnick told CNN last week that the contracts are a “low-value issue.”
The White House said Saturday that President Joe Biden and Trump will meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning. It will be the first time the two men have come face-to-face since the June presidential debate that derailed Biden’s re-election bid.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
