Donald Trump’s team announced on Tuesday it had signed an agreement to start the complex process of transferring control of the federal government to themselves, although the details of the plan suggested some breaks with standard practice.
The incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said the team would now be sending in “landing teams” into the various departments and agencies as it prepares to take over the bureaucracy of the executive branch.
“After completing the selection process of his incoming cabinet, president-elect Trump is entering the next phase of his administration’s transition,” Wiles said. “This engagement allows our intended cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations.”
But the agreement with the Biden administration, known as a memorandum of understanding, appeared to be a pared-down version of what is normally signed by presidential transitions with caveats that indicated a departure from usual restrictions.
The signing of the memo normally unlocks up to $7.2m in government funding to help staffing costs and other expenses, as well as the use of government office space through the nonpartisan General Services Administration.
The financial assistance comes with strings attached – the transition team has to agree to disclose its donors and impose a $5,000 limit on contributions – and the agreement was supposed to be signed months before the election.
The transition team is normally supposed to sign an ethics agreement, which paves the way for transition aides to start receiving government information such as classified briefings and the granting of security clearances.
The announcement by Wiles in a press release suggested that the Trump team had negotiated its own language around some of those restrictions.
While the Trump team was committed to making the identities of its donors public, and would not accept any foreign contributions, Wiles said that it would not be using any government money and its entire operation would be privately funded.
Government ethics experts have previously noted that such an arrangement would allow people seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House to donate directly to him, raising concerns about possible conflicts of interest.
Wiles also said that the Trump team had its own ethics plan, rather than the formal government one, leaving unclear whether all relevant transition aides would be eligible to receive full government briefings that included classified information.
That caveat on the ethics plan dovetailed with reporting by the Guardian that the Trump team is planning for political appointees to receive temporary security clearances on the first day and only face FBI background checks after it had taken over the bureau.
Trump’s lack of interest in engaging with the formal transition stems from the first Trump administration, when officials turned over transition team records to the Russia investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump has previously broken convention with the transfer of power. In 2016, his campaign organized what appeared to be a standard process, until Trump fired his transition team’s leadership after he won the election and cut off communications with the Obama administration.
In 2020, Trump again seemed to follow standard procedure until immediately after the election, pressuring the General Services Administration to not recognize Joe Biden’s election win so his team could not access the federal financial assistance.
