WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s transition team has signed a long-awaited agreement with President Joe Biden’s administration to begin the formal process of bringing the president-elect’s nominees into federal government agencies.

But Trump is still rebuffing many of the standard procedures of a transition. He will not use government facilities or email accounts, and instead will raise private funds, his team said.

“After completing the selection process of his incoming Cabinet, President-elect Trump is entering the next phase of his administration’s transition,” Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a statement Tuesday.

“This engagement allows our intended cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power.”

The agreement allows the formal transition process to begin ahead of Trump’s second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.

It also allows for the transition team to conduct Federal Bureau of Investigation background checks on Trump appointees, but the president-elect’s team suggested it won’t use them.

“The transition already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight,” it said in a statement.

The Trump transition said it also has a legally required ethics plan in place. The General Services Administration, the main agency that oversees the logistics of presidential transitions, posted the document on its website shortly after the agreement was announced.

The plan covers individuals working on the transition, who pledge to avoid conflicts of interest and safeguard both classified and confidential information. They can’t be registered to lobby while working for the transition, or work for a foreign government or political party. They also agree to a six-month cooling-off period after their work for the transition ends, and not lobby any federal agency over specific matters they worked on while helping assemble Trump’s team.

Trump has gotten an unusually early jump on announcing his picks for the cabinet and other top posts, but delayed a formal agreement with the Biden administration that would allow those picks and their “landing teams” to enter federal agencies and receive briefings.

By law, those agreements were supposed to be in place by Oct. 1. The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s general-election rival, signed one in September.

_____

(With assistance from Bill Allison and Bill Haubert.)

_____

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.