As Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) points out, the Trump transition team is already ignoring precedent.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma

Donald Trump’s cabinet people named are not the only ones source of controversial in his transition back to the White House.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to the administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the operations of federal agencies, to warn him that the Trump transition team has refused to sign memorandums of understanding with Biden. -Harris administration. All previous presidents-elect have signed the accords, which outline how the administrations will work together; one, for example, would allow the FBI, under the current administration, to conduct background checks on Trump’s nominees. Another would do it facilitate the Trump team’s national security clearances required to receive classified intelligence briefings before taking office. “The Trump team’s unprecedented refusal to sign agreements with the outgoing administration threatens the American public by crippling the ability of new officials to govern responsibly,” Warren writes.

Additionally, the Trump transition team has yet to post a comprehensive ethics code on the GSA website explaining how it will manage its conflicts of interest, as required by a law that Trump himself adopted. pass in 2020. Warren’s letter notes that while Team Trump has published his own code of ethics, “it includes nothing about how President-elect Trump will manage his own financial conflicts of interest – which experts say will be one of the most alarming corruption challenges of the new administration”. According to Warren, the refusal to release the ethics code increases “the risk that the new administration will govern for the benefit of special interests rather than the American public.”

As the New York Times reported On Sunday, it’s possible that these “special interests” are actually helping to finance the Trump transition: because the Trump team did not sign a memorandum of understanding with the GSA that was expected on September 1, it was able to protect the names of donors to the transition. If the Trump transition had After striking the deal, they would have to publicly disclose their donors, each of whom has an individual donation limit of $5,000 – but the Trump team could have accessed $7.2 million in federal funds to help cover the costs of the transition.

Trump would also be the first president to circumvent this agreement, which appears to suggest that his team believes it can raise more from donors without being limited to the $5,000 cap per individual donor. But as one expert said said THE Timesthis could have a significant ethical cost:

“When money is not disclosed, it is unclear how much everyone is giving, who is giving it and what they are receiving in return for their donations,” said Heath Brown, a professor of public policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. which studies presidential transitions. “This is an area where the vast majority of Americans would agree that they want to know who is paying this bill.”

In her letter to the GSA, Warren asks them to respond by December 5 to questions about how the agency is engaging in the Trump transition and the impacts of the Trump team’s failure to comply with federal law . Spokespeople for the Trump transition team and GSA did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday morning.