Federal agencies have yet to hear from their future bosses.
Advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reached out to the Health and Human Services Department multiple times after Donald Trump tapped him to lead the massive agency, hoping to jumpstart coordination before his takeover in late January. They were rebuffed.
Kennedy’s inability to communicate with the agency he may soon manage, confirmed by an administration official with knowledge of the episodes granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations, is just one consequence of the president-elect’s continued foot-dragging on signing the standard trio of ethics and transparency agreements with the federal government — something his team pledged to do shortly after the election.
Without the agreements in place, Trump’s team can’t access any non-public government data — depriving it of a full view of efforts the White House and federal agencies are taking to safeguard against a range of threats. That includes classified elements of the administration’s involvement in conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and details of high-level conversations with allies. The stalemate has also left the Trump transition largely in the dark on threats closer to home that could quickly mushroom into crises, like the continued spread of avian flu.
“There is no basis for a president-elect’s team to enter federal agencies and have discussions without” signing the MOUs, said Valerie Smith Boyd, the director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the nonpartisan nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which assists all parties with transition planning.
“The main thing that it says is that the members of the transition team will be bound by an ethics agreement that ensures that they’re using information appropriately, that they limit the use of lobbyists and foreign agents, and that individuals who leave the transition and go back to the private sector won’t use this information for personal gain,” she said.
“Until they sign this agreement, they’re not yet government employees. They can do anything they want. They can have any conflicts of interest they want. They could be taking money from foreign governments for all we know,” said Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. Trump and his team “need to convince the American people, including the people who voted for them, that they’re working to help the country, not just make a bunch of billionaires even richer. Not signing these agreements is a great way to tell all those working class voters: ‘Thank you very much. Now eff you.’”
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