The Shady Reason Why Trump Might Not Have Signed These Key Documents

The Trump team’s delay in signing standard transition agreements is raising ethics and security concerns, as well as questions about the incoming administration’s preparedness come Inauguration Day.

The president-elect’s transition team has not yet signed three memoranda of understanding—agreements the incoming administration typically completes with the federal government and current administration to ensure a smooth transition—Politico reported Sunday. This decision prevents Trump appointees from coordinating with the agencies they will run in a few months’ time. 

Beyond undermining the incoming administration’s preparedness—and awareness of classified information on threats to national security and public health—the holdup means Trump’s Cabinet picks have not undergone FBI background checks and that “potential ethical and financial entanglements of the transition staffers” helping the president-elect assemble his Cabinet remain unknown to the public.

Richard Painter, a former Bush administration official, said of the delay: “Until they sign this agreement, they’re not yet government employees. They can do anything they want. They can have any conflicts of interest they want. They could be taking money from foreign governments for all we know.”

One of the agreements Trump has yet to sign would heavily restrict how much individuals and entities can donate to his transition effort. And, in a considerable break with tradition, Trump has so far refused to reveal who his transition donors are. Since foreign nationals can donate to presidential transitions, this raises definite red flags, as anyone could be trying to curry favor—and influence—with Trump without the American people knowing.  

Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the Biden administration on Thursday, describing the president-elect’s team’s “refusal to sign agreements with the outgoing administration” as an unprecedented decision and a threat to the American public, one that “hamstring[s] incoming officials’ ability to govern responsibly. 

“All Americans share an interest in presidential administrations being prepared to handle the basic governance of executive branch agencies, public health and safety threats, and national security emergencies,” Warren wrote.

A federal judge on Monday granted special counsel Jack Smith’s request to dismiss the biggest case against Donald Trump, the criminal indictment related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Smith had asked the judge to dismiss the case without prejudice, which means it could be reopened once Trump leaves office in four years. But for now, Trump is getting away without facing justice for his attempts to overthrow democracy.

“After careful consideration, the Department has determined that [the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel’s] prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” Smith wrote in his motion to dismiss.

“For the reasons set forth in the accompanying Opinion, ECF No. 282, the Government’s Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 281, is hereby GRANTED, and the Superseding Indictment, ECF No. 226, is hereby DISMISSED without prejudice,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in a one-page order shortly after Smith’s motion.

Smith’s announcement on Monday comes after Trump’s sentencing for felony charges—based on his 2016 hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels—was indefinitely postponed last week. The other two cases against him—one for election interference in Georgia and another for mishandling classified documents—have also been indefinitely delayed

This story has been updated.

* This piece has been clarified to note the nature in which Smith dismissed the case.

Representative Lauren Boebert apparently sees the need to supplement her income from Congress—she’s now taking fees to make videos on Cameo.

The far-right Colorado congresswoman and live theater enthusiast joins her former colleagues George Santos and Matt Gaetz on the platform, charging $250 for personal advice or a “pep talk.” She posted a welcome video outlining the services that she would offer through the celebrity video service.

“Hey, Cameo, it’s your girl from Colorado, Lauren Boebert,” she said in the video. “Whether you or someone you know needs an America First pep talk, if you want to surprise friends or family with a message for a special day, or if you just want to know my thoughts on whatever’s on your mind, Cameo is the place to connect with me.”

But there’s a reason why she only has former colleagues on Cameo: She could be breaking the rules for members of the House of Representatives. First, there’s an outside income limit of $31,815, so she’d have to watch how much money she makes, and second, under House rules, members are prohibited from receiving honoraria, defined as a “payment of money or thing of value for an appearance, speech, or article.”

Now, if Boebert was having her Cameo proceeds go to her campaign account, that would probably be in line with House rules, but that is prohibited by the video platform. So it would seem that Boebert should have some questions to answer from the House Ethics Committee, which has another crisis to worry about after Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct.

Santos also was under investigation from the House Ethics Committee due to multiple allegations of corruption while he was in Congress, and now that Boebert has joined Santos and Gaetz on Cameo, she’s created an association that she could have easily avoided. If she continues down a similarly corrupt path, Cameo could end up being her sole source of income.

Right-wing provocateur Christopher Rufo could help shape President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for higher education, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Rufo—a leading actor in right-wing culture wars, from the moral panic surrounding “critical race theory” to the hoax about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio—reportedly “has an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, where he will present the president-elect’s team with a plan to geld American universities by withholding money if they don’t pull back on diversity measures.”

A spokesperson for JD Vance told the Journal that the vice president-elect sees Rufo as “a leading voice in the movement to restore merit and excellence” to higher education, who “recognizes schools and universities exist to equip American students to face tomorrow’s challenges, not to indoctrinate them with the fringe beliefs of the far left.”

To see such lofty aims in action, one can look at how the New College of Florida has transformed since Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Rufo and other conservative activists to the school’s board of trustees in 2023 in his “war on woke.”

Under its new leadership, New College has undergone significant changes, most recently hiring a number of “ideologically aligned rightwing faculty and staff for a range of positions,” per The Guardian, including conservative commentator and comedian Andrew Doyle, who will teach a course on “wokeness.”

The overhaul of New College and Rufo’s actions as trustee have been met with resistance and sharp criticism from students and faculty. One such critic, a visiting history professor, was threatened by Rufo and later dismissed after co-writing an op-ed against the new administration, in what the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called “a clear violation of the public college’s First Amendment obligations.”

According to the Journal, Rufo’s top concerns include ending race-based affirmative action at universities “with which the federal government does business” and defunding colleges “that continue to engage in DEI practices” in an effort to “recapture” them from the left—stances that resonate with president-elect’s thinking on higher ed.

Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, once wrote about how Israel is key to a necessary “American crusade”—and the Geneva Conventions should be thrown out the window.

The Guardian has reported that in his most recent work, The War on Warriors, Hegseth wrote that the U.S. military should completely disregard the international human rights treaties, which outline rules for how to treat civilians during war time.

“The key question of our generation—of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—is way more complicated: what do you do if your enemy does not honor the Geneva conventions. We never got an answer. Only more war. More casualties,” Hegseth wrote. “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?! … Who cares what other countries think?”

In his 2024 book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, he wrote, “If you love America, you should love Israel.”

He goes on to liken his support for Israel to the Crusades, writing, “Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.… Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

Hegseth’s nomination aligns perfectly with President-elect Trump’s right-wing makeover of the federal government. And it doesn’t hurt that, like Trump, Hegseth has a serious allegation of sexual assault from 2017 hanging over his head.