Trump's Failure To Sign Ethics Pledge Is Holding Up Transition: Report

President-elect Donald Trump has missed a deadline to submit an ethics pledge promising to avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical issues, a delay that could hamper his transition to the White House, the New York Times reported.

Trump's transition team missed an October 1 deadline to file the ethics plan that is required by the Presidential Transition Act, the report said.

His team, which was created in August, has also refused to take part in the normal handoff process that begins months before the election, and has disregarded deadlines for signing agreements governing the process.

The delay has precluded the transition team from participating in national security briefings or getting access to federal agencies needed to take control of the government on Inauguration Day on January. 20, 2025, the report said.

"While transition planning is private activity, it is deeply connected to the activity of our government and the stewardship of public resources," Max Stier, the president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that provides resources to candidates through the Center for Presidential Transition, told the New York Times.

"The avoidance of conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest is critical to that task," he said.

The Presidential Transition Act was amended in 2019 to require candidates to post an ethics plan before the election to "include information on how eligible presidential candidates will address their own conflicts of interest during a presidential term," the report said.

The changes were prompted because of ethical problems in Trump's first administration.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington identified 3,400 conflicts of interest related to Trump in his first term.