Trump transition team ethics pledge appears to exclude president-elect

By Betsy Klein, Steve Contorno and Arlette Saenz, CNN

(CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump’s team submitted an ethics plan guiding the conduct of its members throughout the transition period that does not appear to include provisions for one key member of the team: the president himself.

“There does not appear to be a provision addressing the requirement for the president-elect to address his conflicts of interest,” said Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.

CNN has asked the Trump transition for comment on why there is no provision addressing Trump’s potential conflicts of interest.

During his first term, Trump was repeatedly criticized by ethics groups for potential conflicts of interest relating to his businesses and brands. Both Trump’s and his family’s foreign business ties have also come under intense scrutiny throughout his time in office and on the campaign trail.

Still, after winning in 2016, Trump took some nominal steps toward alleviating ethical concerns before entering the White House by pledging to relinquish control of his companies and put his business holdings in a trust, which was controlled by his two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. He has made no such assurances this time.

Rather, Trump lately has added potential conflicts of interest with some of his latest business dealings. Much of his wealth these days is tied up in stock for Trump Media & Technology Group, a newly publicly traded company that owns his social media website TruthSocial. While campaigning, he hawked several new products capitalizing on his name and fame, including a line of watches, some retailing for $100,000, that he launched through an opaque licensing agreement with a company of undisclosed origins. CNN traced the business to a shopping plaza in Sheridan, Wyoming, that is the registered address for dozens of other companies.

Trump and his sons also kickstarted a cryptocurrency venture just weeks before the election, even as he promised to push through an agenda favorable to Bitcoin enthusiasts and investors. Trump has not said how he would guarantee that he won’t pursue these policies – with potentially massive implications for financial markets and the future of the US dollar – in the interest of benefiting his family’s new enterprise.

The ethics agreement, posted late Tuesday to the General Services Administration’s website, otherwise “does appear to comply with most of the requirements in the Presidential Transition Act,” a law governing the protocols around transition activities, said Boyd.

Updates to that act requiring the ethics pledge were introduced by Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, and signed into law by Trump in March 2020.

The plan requires transition team members to “avoid both actual and apparent conflicts of interest,” to “safeguard classified information” and “non-public information and other information that is not readily available to the public.” It also prohibits team members who have participated in lobbying activities in the last year or are registered as lobbyists, and forbids team members from serving as registered foreign agents while serving the transition.

Each team member is required to sign the code of ethical conduct detailing those provisions.

Trump’s team blew past a pair of September and October deadlines to sign agreements with the Biden White House and General Services Administration laying the groundwork for a smooth transition. Democrats and watchdogs sounded the alarms over potential risks to national security and continuity between administrations in the absence of those agreements.

Three weeks after the election, the Trump team submitted its ethics plan and signed the White House agreement, but skipped the GSA agreement, saying in a statement that the transition “will operate as a self-sufficient organization” and that its “organizational autonomy means a streamlined process.”

Trump’s team also has yet to sign an agreement with the Department of Justice to begin processing the security clearances needed for staffers to access classified information during the transition period, White House officials said, adding that “progress has been made towards an agreement.”

The Trump transition did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiry regarding whether it would enter into the agreement before Inauguration Day.

CNN previously reported that Trump’s transition team is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning said. Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said. Critics say the background checks sometimes turn up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage.

When he takes office January 20, Trump will have the authority to make his own changes to the security clearance system, which is largely based on executive orders. For instance, he could charge individuals he trusts to adjudicate the information found during background investigations and make a determination on clearance status, rather than the traditional federal experts who have traditionally managed that process.

Still, Boyd said it was “promising” that progress has been made in the transition process.

“We all continue to hope that agreement will be signed because it will reduce confusion if the Trump team has people with federally-vetted background investigations ready to go on day one,” she said.

Trump’s team declined to sign an agreement with the GSA unlocking access to federal resources like office space and secure communications equipment, which has also raised concerns.

In the absence of that agreement, Boyd said, Trump’s team “may not be operating on a federally-approved secure network,” requiring federal agencies to find ways to protect the sensitive information they share with incoming officials.

The White House on Tuesday night provided guidance to various agencies relating to “best practices to facilitate secure information sharing” with the Trump transition team if needed, a White House official said.

White House deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian met with the Agency Transition Directors Council, which is comprised of senior career leaders at agencies across the federal government, and the deputy chiefs of staff for each department on Wednesday morning to discuss next steps for working with Trump’s agency landing teams, the official said.

The Trump transition team signing the White House agreement, Boyd said, is a “really important step.”

“Both parties should be commended on reaching an agreement to share information. The most concerning scenario would be if the incoming president’s team was not communicating with federal agencies. Now that the communication is open, we’re in a better position for sharing information about national security risks,” Boyd said.

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