Alarms raised over Trump's secretive transition plans if he wins in November: report

Donald Trump's transition team is taking an unprecedented step and refusing to file the paperwork that would be needed as part of the peaceful transfer of power should he win re-election in November.

According to a report from Politico's Hailey Fuchs and Meridith McGraw, the Trump team's "go it alone" approach does deny them transition funding and assistance to assume power swiftly and seamlessly, but by balking at doing the necessary paperwork, it allows them to keep hidden their plans and raise unlimited amounts of cash without disclosing who is making the donations.

As the report notes, "if Trump wins the election and continues to drag his feet on signing the agreement with the White House, it will limit the information he and his team can access to understand current federal operations and challenges."

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Politico is reporting that a ragged start to a second Trump presidency has some government experts concerned.

According to Rich Bagger, who served as the former executive director for Trump’s pre-election 2016 transition, there is "serious work that needs to take place that, it just seemed to me, was facilitated by being … fully integrated into the transition structure.”

The report notes, "A person involved in the Trump transition said that they are exploring a 'spectrum' of legal options for working with the current administration, including signing and not signing the GSA agreements, and the potential implications," before ominously adding, "By not signing the agreement with the White House, which provides access to the agencies, the Trump transition can also avoid submitting an ethics pledge, whose requirements are outlined by the Presidential Transition Act."

Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition, also expressed security concerns about the turn of events, telling Politico, "We’ve already seen hacking attempts in this election cycle, and of course, the dot gov addresses also help federal agencies understand that yes, these individuals that you’re communicating with are official representatives of the candidate. If the candidate does not have dot gov email addresses, will federal agencies have to brief only in person? Would they have to offer, kind of, standalone computers that are not connected to a network? Would they have to provide, kind of, go back to paper binders full of material?”

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