Trump Refuses to Disclose Who Is Funding His Transition

True to character, Donald Trump is already flouting ethics laws and norms even before he takes office as president in 2025. The president-elect is accepting secret donations to fund his transition while refusing to sign ethics pledges or deliver an ethics plan mandated by the Presidential Transitions Act. The transition also has not signed an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation that would allow the agency to do background checks on Trump nominees.

The transition has missed deadlines in September and October despite transition team leaders Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon promising to sign memorandums of understanding with the Biden White House that would facilitate the outgoing administration’s collaboration with Trump’s transition team. According to The New York Times, the Trump transition has privately created an ethics code and conflict-of-interest guidance for transition staff, but those documents do not include a legal requirement — a statement regarding how Trump will handle conflicts of interest while in office.

“This failure undercuts the fundamental purpose of presidential transition laws,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote in a letter to the Biden administration on Thursday. She added, “In effect, President-elect Trump is undermining his administration’s ability to manage urgent national security threats, health and safety threats, and serious conflicts of interest starting on day one of his presidency.”

Historically, presidential transitions — including Trump’s 2016 transition — have signed an agreement to receive financial assistance from the General Services Administration, which is responsible for monitoring the transition process. By accepting the funds and signing the agreement, transitions are agreeing to abide by certain conditions that would limit individual donations to $5,000 and mandate transparency regarding donors. Without disclosing donors, foreign influence is also a concern since there are no restrictions on international donations to transitions, unlike presidential campaigns.

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“When the money isn’t disclosed, it’s not clear how much everybody is giving, who is giving it and what they are getting in return for their donations,” Heath Brown, a presidential transition expert and professor of public policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Times. “It’s an area where the vast majority of Americans would agree that they want to know who is paying that bill.”

Instead of allowing the F.B.I. to investigate Trump administration nominees’ backgrounds, the transition is conducting private background checks. According to CNN, Trump and his acolytes believe that the F.B.I.’s process is too slow and could get in the way of the work Trump wants to do to implement his agenda. Sources told CNN that behind closed doors, Trump has questioned whether background checks are necessary.

Last week, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz dropped out of consideration following reports that a woman told the congressional Ethics Committee that Gaetz had sex with her multiple times when she was 17-years-old. Gaetz was also under investigation by the F.B.I. for sex trafficking and illicit drug use in 2021, but the Justice Department did not bring charges against him. Another woman told the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a minor.

“These allegations are invented and would constitute false testimony to Congress,” Gaetz said in response to the woman’s testimony. “This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism.”

Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, faces a sexual misconduct allegation from a woman who says he sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in 2017. Four sources familiar with the situation told Rolling Stone that they are furious he hid the allegation from them. Trump picks Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also have been accused of sexual misconduct.

“How did he not know? Why didn’t he tell us?” a source close to Trump told Rolling Stone. “Pete wasn’t interviewing for a job at McDonald’s; this is the fucking Pentagon! … Even if the allegations are fake, it doesn’t matter because he was supposed to tell us what we needed to know so we could be better prepared to defend him — not learn about it from the media.”

Trump’s noncompliance with background checks, transparency rules, and ethics set the table for a corrupt administration, perhaps even worse than his first time in office, during which Trump used the government to enrich himself and perform favors for his rich friends.