Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Chip Somodevilla
Donald Trump’s transition team was caught in a “violation of federal law,” a Democratic lawmaker said on Sunday. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) appeared on MSNBC over the weekend, where he was asked about the president-elect’s government takeover.
Mfume called attention to a recent news development causing outrage among Trump critics, saying the former and incoming president has “refused to sign the agreement on background checks, which is a violation of federal law.”
“The FBI can’t do their background checks, and therefore, you can have Senate conferees coming before the Senate for confirmation that have serious issues in their background that we are unaware of,” he said. “So it’s good to keep our eye on all of this. The main thing is not to give up. We have seen this play out before.
There were many people who stuck their head under a rock when Tricky Dick, Richard Nixon was elected, thinking that would be the end of everything. It happened again with Ronald Reagan in 1980.”
He continued, saying “This is something we have to build coalitions around. Work step by step, one goal after another, to get straight for the elections coming up 24 months from now.”
When asked what Democrats can do about the situation, Mfume said “the first thing we can do and ought to do is to scream out the truth and make sure people know what’s going on here.”
“Trump’s transition seem stands to lose $7 million in transition money under the Presidential Transition Act. They don’t care. They can easily make that money up somewhere else, if no place other than Elon Musk, so they’re not worried about losing $7 million as long as they can keep secret the information of who is pulling the strings,” he added. “So I think we’ve got to talk about that, talk about it loudly.
I hope that the larger press in this country starts doing real stories on that and turning a real light on it, simply for the fact that we need transparency in this transition. And it’s really important to look at also what legally can be done. We’re in this situation obviously now where the Justice Department is going through its own transition. The question becomes, who will bring charges? I don’t know.”
