Report: Trump Transition Team Sworn To Secrecy By Non-Disclosure Agreements

FILE - In this March 27, 2004 file photo, passersby look at a sign from Donald Trump's television show, "The Apprentice," hung on the Trump Tower in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
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Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements which bar them from discussing their work with journalists or the public, according to a report from Politico.

The agreement includes a ban on discussing what Politico’s Nancy Cook, who saw a copy of the contract, called “major portions of the transition work,” including policy briefings, personnel and donor information, and draft research papers. It also requires anyone with knowledge of anyone else leaking information to report their co-workers to higher-ups.

A staple of the corporate world but unusual in government, NDAs have nonetheless accompanied Trump all along his road to the White House. During the presidential campaign, paid and unpaid volunteers alike on the Trump campaign were required to sign NDAs that, among other provisions, forbade them from even criticizing Trump in public.

“I guess he doesn’t know about the First Amendment,” Davida Perry, an employment lawyer in New York City, told The Daily Dot, who first reported the existence of the contract in March. “This is really shocking.”

Trump’s transition team NDA notably does not include that non-disparagement clause, according to Politico.

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  1. If the people are paying for the transition, it doesn’t seem like this would be enforceable. And the work product subject to FOIA, no?

  2. We are about to have the most secretive Presidency every. Only fake Russia news stories will be coming out of Trump’s White House.

  3. forbade them from even criticizing Trump in public.

    Maybe this would is a work around. “I would like to lift-up and highlight the recent actions of the President, which many have called “asinine,” and “completely inappropriate”. I, myself, am amazed by his actions. President Trump is truely a man completely unencumbered by intellect, maturity, taste, or legal understanding.”

  4. I don’t think this will be enforceable considering many of these folks are considered government employees. They are bound, first and foremost, by government rules of engagement, proper record keeping, etc., for us, the people, to have access to. Deal with it, Donnie.

  5. And so it begins…

    Looks like having to fire little Flynn Jr. pissed somebody off.

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