Federal agencies across government have met the statutory deadline to prepare their materials for whoever wins this week’s election, though Donald Trump may be delayed in accessing them due to his ongoing refusal to participate in the formal transition process.
The Biden administration met its Nov. 1 deadline to finalize the briefing documents that agencies will offer to the winning side’s transition team when designated career staff begin meeting as soon as this week, a General Services Administration spokesperson said on Monday. The materials outline the basics of that agency’s operations and include some detail on ongoing and future projects.
Unlike Vice President Kamala Harris’ team, Trump’s team has signed no agreement to work with the current administration, which could bog down the process if he wins, former Trump and federal transition officials said.
Even if the election remains too close for the General Services Administration to make an official declaration—or “ascertainment,” as it is referred to in federal statute—of who won and is therefore eligible to proceed into the second, post-election phase of the transition, a reform President Biden signed into law would enable both Harris and Trump to receive the newly finalized materials and send their “landing teams” into agencies.
Trump’s decision not to sign a memorandum of understanding with GSA and the White House could cause delays, as agencies may not have the required heads-up from his team of which individuals will deploy into their offices. Typically, the screening to provide access to agencies takes place before polls close.
“Agencies want to know who is coming in on the days after the election,” said Rich Bagger, who led Trump’s transition team in 2016. “They need to know who to let in…they wanted that information from us by Election Day.”
Bagger added that the exchange of information might be possible even without Trump’s participation in the pre-election transition process, but the vast scope of the federal government would make that unwieldy without going through official channels.
“Because there were so many touch points, it was easier to do it in the official fashion,” Bagger said.
A former federal transition official told Government Executive that GSA is currently having discussions over how to handle access to buildings and classified materials for landing team members who have not been cleared. Under law, the official said, those individuals must be publicly disclosed and their ethics agreements posted in order to participate. Harris has already released her team’s ethics agreement as part of its White House memorandum of understanding.
There is a new wrinkle this cycle, under to a 2022 law giving both candidates access to transition funds and materials if neither one has conceded within five days of the election. Trump never conceded the election in 2020 and GSA waited weeks until it gave the official green light for transition activities to begin, which caused delays to Biden’s transition efforts. This time around, under a similar circumstance, both Harris and Trump would have access to a segment of GSA’s transition funds and be able to start working with agencies directly after five days. Once GSA designates that one side has won, the other team would have to cease its transition efforts.
Trump’s post-election transition planning was delayed in 2016 because he abandoned the efforts that Bagger and former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., had led, opting to essentially start from scratch after his victory.
Bagger said that the Trump team would have been prepared more quickly if it had used his work, noting that he had met before the election with the White House Transition Coordinating Council to go over big-picture steps and had participated in the Agency Directors Transition Council discussions each month that included what information each candidate’s team wanted in their initial briefing materials. The team also engaged with the FBI on security clearances—a process Trump’s team is now considering eschewing altogether—and coordinated with the Office of Government Ethics on what steps would be expected of potential political appointees.
“It seems it would be difficult to do [all of] that sitting completely outside that official process,” Bagger said.
Because Biden had engaged in that work, his team was setting up meetings within two hours of GSA’s ascertainment in mid-November, the former federal transition official said.
“We had everything ready and the emails all set up,” the former official said, referring to the .gov email addresses Biden transition team members received from the agencies to which they would be deploying. “We just pressed the buttons.”
There is now a question of how quickly and even whether Trump could get his teams in place at agencies in the intervening period between the election and the new president’s inauguration, as is customary.
“If they aren’t submitting information, they can’t get cleared,” the official said. “A lot of stuff that is normally happening that is not happening.”
GSA is gaming out its plans to be prepared for whatever outcome follows the election, the former federal transition official said. The agency has solicited input from its own and White House counsel.
“They have worked every scenario you can think of, and some you cannot think of,” that person said.
