Donald Trump is still months away from taking office, but he is already managing to break the law by dragging his feet on ethics agreements required for the presidential transition.
The president-elect has yet to submit a series of transition agreements with the Biden administration, in part because he is refusing to commit to an ethics pledge vowing to avoid conflicts of interest once sworn in to office.
Updates to the Presidential Transition Act were introduced by Trump ally Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, and signed into law by Trump himself in March 2020.
But now he is refusing to play ball and could be falling foul of laws he helped enact as a result.
According to CNN, his nervousness around the ethics pledge could be due to his financial interests, which may constitute conflicts of interest.
Trump’s most recent financial disclosures as a candidate showed that he has continued to make millions off his properties, books and licensing deals. He and his family recently launched a new cryptocurrency business.
A sizable share of his net worth, meanwhile, is tied to the publicly traded parent company of Truth Social, the conservative social media network.
Trump is the dominant shareholder and said Friday that he has no intention of selling his 114.75 million shares, worth about $3.7 billion.
Max Stier, the Partnership for Public Service’s president and CEO, has warned of “severe” consequences if the Trump transition continues to fail to engage with President Joe Biden’s team.
“Is it possible just to walk past all this? And the answer is that it is possible — and we’re watching it happen. But the consequences are severe. It would not be possible to be ready to govern on Day 1 without engaging” in interactions with agencies about the state of play within the federal government and the world writ large, Stier said.
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