Nearly one month after he won the 2024 presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump and his team have reached a deal to formally begin the transition process while avoiding the use of any federal resources or taxpayer dollars.
In a statement, incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said Trump was “entering the next phase of his administration’s transition by executing a Memorandum of Understanding with President Joe Biden’s White House” that will enable incoming administration personnel to begin working with their outgoing counterparts.
“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,” she said.
An accompanying fact sheet notes that Trump’s transition will be run entirely using private funds and will not use any taxpayer dollars set aside under the Presidential Transition Act.
Nor will the transition make use of any federal office space or information technology systems, with the transition fact sheet stating that it will “operate as a self-sufficient organization.”
According to Trump’s team, the “organizational autonomy” provided by not using any government IT systems “means a streamlined process that guarantees the Trump Administration is ready on Day 1.”
The president-elect and his team do not want their transition communications or records on federal systems that could be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests (AP)
But the Trump team has also been keen on keeping the transition organization’s communications completely private and off of any government computers that could one day be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
After Trump first entered the White House in 2017, Democratic-aligned transparency groups were able to use such requests to gain access to transition communications that were later used in litigation against Trump’s administration.
Despite concerns from security experts about the private infrastructure used by the transition being succeptible to foreign hacking, the transition said it already has established “existing security and information protections built in” and “will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight.”
Another hurdle that has delayed the transition thus far has been a dispute over how the Trump team would satisfy federal ethics requirements laid out in the Presidential Transition Act, but Wiles said the transition’s existing ethics plan already meets legal requirements that must be satisfied before incoming personnel can “seamlessly move into the Trump Administration.”
The transition team said the ethics plan would be posted on the General Services Administration website.
Additionally, the Trump transition team must disclose the identities of “landing team” members who will meet with officials at the agencies they will be running come noon on January 20, 2025.
Those teams would “will quickly integrate directly into federal agencies and departments with access to documents and policy sharing,” the transition said.
The transition organization will also disclose the private donors who fund it and will be barred from accepting foreign funds under federal law.
