Blog de Dunlap: Trump is already breaking the law

Danielle, we are just over one week since the election, and Donald Trump and his transition team are already breaking the law.

I would know — I wrote the law.

You see, an earlier law, the Presidential Transition Act, was passed in 1963 to ensure a smooth transfer of executive powers between administrations. Its aim is to prevent any government disruptions that would harm the American public or our national security.

I authored the Transition Team Ethics Improvement Act to add new ethical standards to that law, like:

Requiring eligible presidential candidates to develop and release transition team ethics plans and disclose how they will address their own conflicts of interest before the election. These disclosures are required by October 1st in an election year, providing the public with the opportunity to assess candidates' ethics plans prior to a general election;
Requiring transition team members to sign an ethics-specific code of conduct; and
Establishing a set of minimum requirements for transition team ethics plans, including information about how the transition team will enforce a code of ethical conduct and address the role of lobbyists on transition teams.

These provisions of my bill were included in bipartisan legislation that was enacted in 2020.

But Trump and his transition team have not signed the legally required ethics agreement.

This is what illegal corruption looks like. Plain and simple.

We already knew that Trump didn't respect the law. That's been proven in court. But I won't accept standing idly by and watching as he swats away ethics requirements and bulldozes checks and balances — and we need to call out and fight back against this corruption with every chance we get.

Add your name if you're with me, Danielle: Trump must follow the rule of law and sign the ethics agreements required under the Presidential Transition Act.

ADD MY NAME

We already saw Donald Trump run the most corrupt administration in modern history.

That's one of the biggest reasons why I introduced these ethics enhancements to the Presidential Transition Act.

It's simple: The American people should have complete confidence that government officials — including those running presidential transitions — are making decisions with only one factor in mind: the public interest. Not their own financial interests. Not the interests of big donors and giant corporations. The public interest.

I'm going to keep up the fight to demand that Trump and his transition team follow this law — and I'm also going to keep up the fight for broad anti-corruption reform, like banning members of Congress and federal judges from owning and trading individual stocks and imposing an enforceable code of conduct on the Supreme Court.

Together we can demonstrate that the American people do not accept this. Add your name if you're with me: The Trump administration must uphold the rule of law.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth