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.
