Trump ignoring this federal law means he can now 'circumvent fundraising rules': report

Fox obtains fact sheet from GOP-led House committee debunking Trump’s FEMA claims

New York Times, which is now reporting that the former president is outright rejecting coordinating with President Joe Biden's administration on its transition plans. The Times' Ken Bensinger wrote that federal law actually requires the presidential nominees of both parties to sign agreements to keep the outgoing administration apprised of its transition plans in order to have a "seamless transfer of power" regardless of which party wins the election. Trump has reportedly now missed two key deadlines for signing the agreements (Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has complied with the deadlines).

Bensinger also noted that by not signing the documents — one of which is related to ethics — the ex-president can by default "circumvent fund-raising rules that put limits on private contributions to the transition effort." Trump is also not in compliance with "ethics rules meant to avoid possible conflicts of interest for the incoming administration."

The Trump transition team pushed back on assertions that it was flouting federal law, telling the Times it "continue[s] to constructively engage" with the Biden administration and that it was simply negotiating the fine print of the agreements. Trump transition co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon (Trump's former Small Business Association secretary and wife of WWE co-founder Vince McMahon) added that "any suggestion to the contrary is false and intentionally misleading."

“An effective transition leads to an effective administration. It leads to better staffing, better organization and leads to the country being safer and more secure,” John Jay College public policy professor Heath Brown told the Times. “I think the Trump transition team is unsure of how much they want to play by the rules.”

In his third bid for the White House, Trump has also refused to participate in national security briefings despite multiple ongoing global conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. And campaign staffers have not been obtaining security clearances necessary to view sensitive documents.

Notably, one major plank of Project 2025 — authored in part by more than 140 of Trump's former staffers and advisors — is the vetting of upwards of 54,000 new presidential appointees screened primarily for their loyalty to Trump and the MAGA agenda.

Trump flouting transition rules and procedures in 2024 also follows a familiar pattern. The Times reported that in 2016, Trump abruptly fired his transition team leadership and stopped communicating with outgoing President Barack Obama's administration.

Fox News “obtained a fact sheet assembled by the majority side of the House Appropriations Committee” that debunked several false claims made by Donald Trump and his supporters, Senior Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram reported Tuesday.

Trump continues to capitalize on a double-whammy of catastrophic hurricanes pummeling the southeastern United States. Last month, Hurricane Helene — a massive Category 4 hurricane — slammed into Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, killing at least 230 people. Now, Hurricane Milton — which was upgraded Wednesday back to a Category 5 hurricane — threatens Florida’s Gulf Coast in areas already devastated by Hurricane Helene.

As the federal government mobilizes to respond to the storms, Trump has taken to the campaign trail to claim the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doesn’t have enough money to assist in rescue and recovery operations because the Biden Administration has “[stolen] FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.”

According to Pergram’s account of the fact sheet, the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), is debunking those false Trump claims.

The “fact sheet” obtained by Fox, Pergram reports, “says that FEMA ‘has enough funding in the short-term to address immediate needs for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.’”

"It also declares there is ‘no funding connection between’ the migrant shelter program and the Disaster Relief Fund.’” Pergram wrote in a tweet.

The House Appropriations Committee fact sheet also undermines an op-ed published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

“Federal Emergency Management Agency staff are working hard,” Vance wrote. “The agency’s response to Helene has been praised in some quarters and criticized elsewhere. But it too has been the victim of misplaced Biden-Harris political priorities. Under Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden, FEMA has funneled millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations whose stated goal is facilitating mass migration into the U.S. The effort stems from a White House directive to reorient FEMA’s institutional focus away from U.S. citizens and toward aliens who either have no legal right to be here or whose legal status depends on the say-so of the Biden-Harris administration.”

But as the the fact sheet explains, there is “no intermingling of funding between these two programs.”

“The only connection is that both programs are administered by FEMA,” the fact sheet reads, according to Pergram.