We knew two weeks ago that Donald Trump had no intention of undergoing a legal transfer of power. Peaceful, maybe, but only because he won. But to be honest with you, I’m not sure he knows how to NOT break the law anymore.

Immediately after the election, we saw a post from Elizabeth Warren calling out Trump for refusing to sign parts of the Presidential Transition Act, a memorandum of understanding in place since 1963. At the time of this tweet, it was being reported by CNN as a result of the fact that it contains conflict of interest pledges.

Donald Trump and his transition team are already breaking the law.

I would know because I wrote the law.

Incoming presidents are required to prevent conflicts of interest and sign an ethics agreement.

This is what illegal corruption looks like. https://t.co/JJjJ59DgB5

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 11, 2024

Trump has been well-known as someone who doesn’t much care about conflicts of interest, and there are plenty of conflicts just among many of the people he’s surrounding himself with so far.

Elon Musk has government contracts through his company SpaceX, and he’s already ingratiated himself as the so-called “First Buddy” of the Trump administration. Who knows how many regulatory agencies and committees he’ll try to dismantle as Trump’s cost-cutting czar.

So what is the Presidential Transition Act, and why is he still refusing to sign it all? Well, key to it is in the fact that it started right after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That single event disrupted American government so much, they were forced to create a framework that the incoming and outgoing administrations could agree to.

It also paved the way for the General Services Administration — relatively new back then, but around since 1949 — to provide the platform by which all of the essential functions of a transition take place.

The GSA is an independent agency of the US government that helps manage and support the basic functions of federal agencies. It provides products and and communication tools for government offices, along with transportation and office space for federal employees.

Now Trump is refusing to sign the Transition paperwork for a different reason, although it’s undeclared.

Signing the pages would subject his nominees for the several federal leadership positions and various roles in his incoming administration to FBI background checks — and that’s something that Trump just can’t have.

If the FBI did a background check on Pete Hegseth, for example, it would make the police report on him from 2017 part of the official federal record. Neither the would-be Defense Secretary nor Trump himself wants a report saying Hegseth physically barred a woman from leaving her hotel room, took her cell phone, sexually assaulted her, and finished his business on the bare skin of her stomach.

That might prove to be more than Senators could, well, stomach during a confirmation hearing.

Aside from that, failure to sign the Transition documents means that the Biden administration can’t give any nominees security clearance. Only Trump. They can’t even give his nominees and picks briefings. They’d all be flying blind on day one, should he neglect to sign these papers all the way up until inauguration.

But in all honesty, it has to be the background checks. Normally, the FBI discloses the results of any such background checks to the Senate prior to confirmation hearings. And JD Vance has already told everyone that Trump intends to fire the FBI chief that he himself appointed back in 2017, after he fired James Comey for looking into his Russian conflicts.

It’s obvious they don’t want the FBI looking into anything, even the backgrounds of Trump’s picks to lead the most important positions in his Cabinet. He’s not content with simply having control of both chambers of Congress, and ramming through his nominees as quickly as possible.

He doesn’t even want the Senators who will almost assuredly vote in lockstep with the rest of the Republicans to know anything about the people they’re barely looking at in the first place.

None of this can be good.

President Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, had a statement for reporters last week:

We certainly are stressing that the White House and the administration stand ready to provide assistance and that access to services and information certainly outlined in the GSA, and the White House memorandum of agreement. So, those conversations continue. And we want this to go smoothly, and that’s what we’re trying to get to.

But Trump doesn’t want any of that.