Sen. Elizabeth Warren is accusing President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team of “breaking the law” amid reports it missed a deadline to file a required ethics pledge with the Biden administration.

Trump is required to submit a series of transition agreements, including one related to ethics, to unlock national security information and resources to make for a smoother changeover. According to multiple reports and a letter last month from Rep. Jamie Raskin, R-Md., Trump missed deadlines on Sept. 1 and Oct. 1 and still has not filed the paperwork.

Citing a source familiar with the process, CNN reported Monday that the delay centers on the ethics agreement. The Presidential Transition Act requires a president-elect to sign a pact to implement and enforce an ethics code for the transition. 

“Donald Trump and his transition team are already breaking the law,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote Monday on X, formerly Twitter. “I would know because I wrote the law. Incoming presidents are required to prevent conflicts of interest and sign an ethics agreement. This is what illegal corruption looks like.”

Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes told Spectrum News in a statement that the transition team's lawyers "continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act. We will update you once a decision is made."

According to The New York Times, Trump’s transition team has privately drafted an ethics code and conflict-of-interest statement for its staff, but they do not explain how Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, would address conflicts of interest himself during his presidency, as required by law.

The reported holdup has resulted in the Trump transition being behind on key briefings from federal agencies.

“You can't simply waltz into the Defense Department or the CIA or any federal agency without an agreement with the existing government about what the terms of engagement are going to be, who are the people that are supposed to be enabled to come in, have they got the clearances that they need to be able to access non-public or classified information?” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan good-government group, told C-SPAN. 

A transition team needs access to such information “to get up to speed about the threat environment that we’re operating in,” Stier said.

“And these jobs are incredibly important and incredibly complex, and you really need a pretty long runway in order to be prepared to step in and not make a mistake,” he added. “I mean, mistakes will cost us a great deal.”

In his Oct. 23 letter to Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance — written before the election — Raskin wrote that their actions “demonstrate a spectacular disregard for the successful continuation of the essential institutions of American democratic government.”

Without the transition agreements, “federal agencies are unlikely to be able to securely and effectively communicate with your staff, which will endanger ‘the orderly transfer of the executive power’ and threaten our national security,” Raskin wrote. 

The Maryland congressman suggested Trump’s hesitancy to sign the agreements may be at least partially driven by his intent to circumvent fundraising rules that limit private contributions to presidential transitions and by “a more general aversion to ethics rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest in the incoming administration.”

Signing one of the agreements with the General Services Administration gives a transition team access to services and facilities from the federal government, including office space, office equipment, information technology and staff assistance. But, by law, incoming presidents who accept the terms can only receive private contributions of no more than $5,000 per donor, which are reported publicly.

Every president has taken the deal since Congress passed the Pre-election Presidential Transition Act in 2010.

Trump refused to divest from his global business empire when he was first elected president and has said he plans to retain his stake in the company during his second term.

Note: This article was updated to include the statement from Trump transition spokeperson Brian Hughes.