Both Trump and his family’s foreign business ties have also come under intense scrutiny during his tenure and during the campaign.
Trump and his transition team are already behind schedule in accessing key transition briefings from the Biden administration, having failed to sign a pair of agreements to unlock critical information before taking over the federal government in 72 days.
The impasse partly revolves around a mandatory agreement on ethical issues.
A source familiar with the process acknowledged that details are still being worked out with the Biden administration regarding the ethics agreement, which is required by law under the Presidential Transition Act and applies to all members of the transition team.
Updates to that bill requiring an ethics pledge were introduced by Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and signed by Trump himself in March 2020.
The source would not comment further on the Trump team’s concerns about the ethics pledge.
Trump’s latest financial disclosures as a candidate showed that he continued to make millions from his real estate, books and licensing deals.
He and his family recently launched a new cryptocurrency business.
A significant portion of his net worth, meanwhile, is tied to the publicly held parent company of Truth Social, a conservative social media network.
Trump is the dominant shareholder and said Friday that he has no intention of selling his 114.75 million shares, worth about $3.7 billion.
Trump’s team ignored several key pre-election deadlines to unlock transition activities with the Biden administration’s General Services Administration and the White House. Experts are sounding the alarm over Day One’s impact on national security preparedness.
The GSA agreement, due Sept. 1, gives Trump’s team access to office space and secure communications, among other provisions.
And the White House deal, due on Oct. 1, serves as a gatekeeper to agency and information access and lays the groundwork for Trump’s team to obtain the security clearances needed to begin receiving classified information.
The ethics agreement was also due by October 1.
A Trump adviser told CNN the president-elect intends to sign an ethics pledge, but said the transition team’s top priority is selecting and vetting candidates for top cabinet roles.
It is not clear when Trump will sign the pledge.
The adviser downplayed the missed deadlines, saying it was “not a concern at all,” but nonpartisan observers and Democrats warned that failure to sign those deals could pose a national security risk.
Trump’s team could have begun receiving briefings from federal agencies as early as Thursday if he had signed the agreements, according to Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Presidential Transition Center at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.
Boyd estimated that “hundreds” of Trump officials involved in the transition will need background checks to receive classified briefings.
Harris arranges celebrities by battleground states in the final hours
Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, warned of “severe” consequences if the Trump transition continues to fail to cooperate with President Joe Biden’s team.
“Is it possible to just walk past all of this? And the answer is that it is possible – and we are watching it happen. But the consequences are serious. It would not be possible to be ready to rule on day one without engagement” in interactions with agencies about the state of the federal government and the world in general, Stier said.
The transition, he added, is the “point of greatest vulnerability” for US security.
“The new team comes with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet, and maybe the world. And to do that effectively, they absolutely have to do a lot of groundwork,” Stier said.
If Trump is inaugurated in January without having participated in those activities, Stier warned, “He cannot be ready to take over our government in a way that is safe for all of us. That’s just not possible.
You will not have the larger team around him that is necessary to run our government quickly and available to enter leadership positions in our government.”
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients addressed Trump’s transition leaders Wednesday to emphasize the Biden administration’s commitment to “lead an orderly transition” and outline the necessary agreements needed to move forward, a White House official told CNN.
“Today, Chief of Staff Jeff Zients reached out to Trump-Vance transition co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon to clarify our intent to lead an orderly transition and reiterate the role agreements play in driving transition activities,” the official said Wednesday.
Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, warned in a letter to Trump in the weeks before the election that ignoring the transition deadlines deviates “from well-established norms of the federal government and demonstrates a spectacular disregard for the successful continuation of the core institutions of American democratic government.” “
Raskin said that without the memorandum, the transfer of authority is in jeopardy and could “jeopardize our national security.”
That’s been a problem in the past: In 2000, while the Supreme Court was awaiting a recount in Florida, neither George W. Bush’s nor Al Gore’s teams participated in the transition, something the 9/11 Commission report found to be a contributing factor. terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.