Trump team signs some, but not all, critical transition documents

The Trump transition team has signed an agreement with the current administration that will unlock access to resources to further the transition process, but the Trump team said they will not sign another critical transition agreement with the General Services Administration that would make the transition more secure and transparent, the Biden White House said Tuesday. 

Biden White House officials said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has yet to agree to terms on a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department, which will allow for the processing of security clearance requests. 

The General Services Administration is an independent federal agency that is in charge of federal office space, but also supports transition teams, presidential inauguration work, and, under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, must regularly report to Congress on the status of transition planning. 

Since September — well before the election — the White House and the agency asked the Trump 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, said White House spokesperson Saloni Sharma. The Trump team announced Tuesday that it has signed the White House agreement.  

“After completing the selection process of his incoming Cabinet, President-elect Trump is entering the next phase of his administration’s transition by executing a Memorandum of Understanding with President Joe Biden’s White House,” said incoming Trump White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. “This engagement allows our intended Cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power.”

Signing the White House agreement allows authorized members of Trump’s team to access White House and agency facilities, information and employees.

But since the Trump team is declining to sign a similar agreement with General Services Administration, office space, secure email addresses and funding for transition staffing and other activities will not be provided by GSA, Sharma said. She said the White House will work to protect non-public information and prevent conflicts of interest, despite the lack of a signed memo. 

And although 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. It’s the Justice Department that is responsible for processing requests for security clearances for incoming administration officials who will need access to briefing materials and national security information, and those clearances cannot happen without a signed memorandum of understanding between the Trump transition team and the Justice Department. 

The Justice Department, not the White House or General Services Administration, is responsible for security clearances for transition personnel. 

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center who focuses on presidential transitions, said the terms of the memo of understanding outlined Wiles reflect, in her assessment, an effort from the Trump transition team to shield themselves from transparency.

“They’re sort of making it up as they go, because it’s never been done like this before,” she said. 

While Wiles has suggested not signing the General Services Administration document saves taxpayer money, using taxpayer money comes with strings attached — specifically, more requirements for transparency and documentation, Dunn Tenpas said. 

“If you take government resources, the memorandum with GSA requires that you then have to report all donations to the transition, and they cannot exceed $5,000 per person,” she said. “It’s two things: One, they want the privacy of who their donors are and if they don’t accept the GSA money, they don’t have to disclose anything — and secondly, they have a few supporters, like Miriam Adelson and Elon Musk that are billionaires… So this notion of getting $7 million from the government to help jump-start your transition just isn’t as attractive as it might have been to the Harris campaign, but I think more importantly, they probably don’t want people to know that 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 records.

“GSA wants them to use the computers for the government because they think that they have more security within their networks, and they worry that if they’re doing government business on the transition on a private network, that could be hacked more easily,” Dunn Tenpas said. “They say things like the transition already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight. But the other reason is, if they sign onto the government computers, then all of those emails are subject to FOIA requests.”

contributed to this report.