Trump's transition team was required to submit the ethics plan by October 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act.
Credit: The New York Times
President-elect Donald Trump has not yet submitted a legally required ethics pledge stating that he will avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns while in office, raising concerns that his refusal to do so will hamper the smooth transition to power.
Trump's transition team was required to submit the ethics plan by October 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act.
While the transition team's leadership has privately drafted an ethics code and a conflict-of-interest statement governing its staff, those documents do not include language, required under the law, that explains how Trump himself will address conflicts of interest during his presidency.
Since Trump created his transition team in August, it has refused to participate in the normal handoff process, which typically begins months before the election.
It has missed multiple deadlines for signing required agreements governing the process. That has prevented Trump's transition team from participating in national security briefings or gaining access to federal agencies to begin the complicated work of preparing to take control of the government on Jan. 20, 2025.
"While transition planning is private activity, it is deeply connected to the activity of our government and the stewardship of public resources," said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that provides resources to candidates through the Center for Presidential Transition. "The avoidance of conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest is critical to that task."
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden's chief of staff had reached out to the Trump transition team and that its officials "say they have an intent" to sign the agreements, but gave no indication of timing.
Last month, leaders of the Trump transition team said that they intended to complete the required agreements with the General Services Administration and with the White House, known as memorandums of understanding. The transition co-chairs, Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick, also said in a statement that "all transition staff have signed a robust ethics pledge as a requirement of their participation."
A spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
The Presidential Transition Act governs the complex process of handing over the byzantine operations of the federal government to a new executive in the 2 1/2 months between Election Day and Inauguration Day.
In 2019, Congress amended that law to require candidates to create and publicly post an ethics plan before the election and to "include information on how eligible presidential candidates will address their own conflicts of interest during a presidential term."
That bipartisan law was born in part out of concerns about ethical issues during the first Trump administration.
While Trump's appointees were required to comply with ethical codes, Trump declared shortly before taking office that he would not divest his assets, nor would he place them in a blind trust.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, has since identified more than 3,400 conflicts of interest tied to Trump during his first administration, among them holding political events and hosting foreign dignitaries at hotels and resorts owned by his company.
As part of their own transition efforts, both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris submitted and posted ethics agreements, pledging to "avoid both actual and apparent conflicts of interest." They also signed the memorandums of understanding in a timely manner.
The Trump transition's ethics documents are silent on the question of Trump's ethical conduct.
"He's completely thumbing his nose at the idea that all Americans are participating in the same basic public enterprise," said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who last month wrote to Trump and urged him to comply with the Presidential Transition Act's legal requirements.
Of particular note, Raskin said, was the fact that Trump's transition team blew past the Sept. 1 deadline to sign the agreement with the General Services Administration. That document provides for a variety of services to be made available to the president-elect, including $7.2 million in funding for the costs of transition. But it also puts a $5,000 cap on individual donations to the transition and requires the public disclosure of all its donors.
By refusing to sign that agreement, Trump effectively faces no limit on contributions and does not need to name his donors publicly. Money raised by the transition is not regulated by any other government agency.
A separate concern involves the other memorandum of understanding, with the White House. Among other things, it sets the conditions under which the current administration can share sensitive government information with the incoming president's team.
Until the Trump transition signs that document, the Biden administration is legally barred from providing it with the security clearances needed to share classified intelligence and national defense briefings, Stier said. It also cannot give transition employees physical access to the 438 different federal agencies that they will soon control, and it cannot allow them to review their files.
But by law, that agreement cannot be signed until an ethics plan that conforms to federal statute is submitted to the White House and posted online, creating something of a game of chicken between the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump transition.
If neither side blinks, Trump's team would be forced to assume control of the entire federal government cold. That, Stier said, could leave the country vulnerable at a critical moment.
"The consequences are severe," Stier said. "It would not be possible to be ready to govern on Day 1."