Hiding Grift Is the Reason Trump Won’t Sign Transition Documents

There is some real creative genius about to take center stage in Washington, D.C. And no, it is not political genius. Would that it were. What it is, is genius at thieving. The most basic tasks, that other presidents-elect have pushed through unhesitatingly, are now tools of grift in the hands of Donald Trump and his coterie. Trump’s transition team glaringly doesn’t want the FBI to do background checks. Here we go again, with shady characters that would not in any normal world be put into security clearance positions, but in Trump world, that’s the norm.

And Trump’s transition team is all too happy to have access to briefings, so they signed that part of the paperwork. But the buck stops right there. The transition team is not willing to sign a basic Memorandum Of Understanding, (MOU), because they don’t want the transparency that goes along with it. Therein lies a tale and a warning to America about how things are going to go for the next four years. Color the incoming administration clandestine. If clandestine was a color, it would be yellow, for cowardice, and contrasting perfectly with Orange Man.

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.”

You see how this is original to Trump? Just as making a fortune off of housing Secret Service personnel in his hotels was original, or how having foreign dignataries stay at the Trump International in D.C. in order to grease the wheels of access to the presidency was original to Trump?

This is what we’re looking at. The public coffers will be looted and Trump will sell government contracts and favors to the highest bidder. America has voted a corrupt oligarchy into power, but nobody would listen. Evidently the messaging was wrong but far more importantly, there are two messaging silos in this country and the people who needed to hear the message are tuned in elsewhere. Or wouldn’t have understood the message had they heard it.

Plus, as Pastor John Pavlovitz pointed out, the electorate who voted Trump in, voted out of fear. The sublime irony is that the man that they voted in, is the only one they need to fear. And secrecy is also a big part of this transition stall, which only goes to buttress the theory that shady dealings are going on. If everything was above board, why not use the government servers? Oh, right, they’re subject to FOIA requests. Never mind.

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.”

The last thing anybody in Trump world wants is people finding out the truth of what’s going on. Again, clandestine is the descriptor of Trump II and he hasn’t even walked into the door of the White House yet.

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