In the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, according to numerous officials who have spoken to POLITICO, representatives of the president-elect were unusually slow to arrive at various agencies to meet with counterparts.

Those who did arrive expressed suspicion toward the departing political appointees, as well as the career government staffers who had served in multiple administrations. The Trump appointees spoke of the career staffers as a “deep state” determined to thwart Trump’s agenda.

Briefing books Obama aides had prepared for their successors gathered dust. Some nominees for top positions -— such as Rex Tillerson, the man Trump named as his first secretary of State — barely interacted with the people they were replacing.

The handoff proved deeply unsettling for Obama political appointees, as well as career staffers at the National Security Council and elsewhere.

They noted that the outgoing Democratic administration was already laying the groundwork for the transition by early 2016. In preparing so far in advance, Obama was echoing the president he succeeded, Republican George W. Bush.

Bush got his transition plans going long before the 2008 election in part because he was scarred by the handoff he’d experienced from his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

The Clinton-Bush transition was harried because of the contested results of the 2000 election, which the Clinton team had hoped Vice President Al Gore would win. Bush, who oversaw the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, also knew he’d be handing off in a time of war, so he wanted to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Bush and Obama also did transition planning toward the end of their first terms — a more apt analogy for what Trump faces now. But people familiar with those efforts agree it was nowhere near the scale of what they did when they knew they were leaving office for good.

Still, former officials and experts say, a transition is a transition, even when a president is booted after just one term, and it’s best to plan for the possibility of defeat.

In an open letter posted by the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, a bipartisan group of former U.S. officials with experience in the topic point out that going through the motions is a good exercise for an incumbent even if he wins a second term.

“Effective planning is essential given the inevitable turnover, a Senate confirmation process which unfortunately is taking longer, and the fact that the fifth year of a president’s tenure typically provides a window for bipartisan policy development,” the letter states.

The stakes are high, especially for a new administration.

“If successful, a new president in short order will have to recruit 4,000 political appointees, including 1,200 who require Senate confirmation; prepare a $4.7 trillion budget; roll out and pursue a vigorous policy agenda; and learn how to manage a workforce of 2 million civilian employees and 2 million active duty and reserve troops,” the letter notes.

Trump has said nothing publicly to suggest he’s preparing for a handoff. Some Democrats wonder whether Trump still views transition planning as “bad karma,” though it clearly didn’t hurt last time.

A White House official recently told POLITICO, however, that the administration is starting to think about staffing in a second term, but that no one has yet begun drawing up lists of potential hires.

By May, Trump technically won’t have a choice but to get a transition process going. Thanks to a 2016 law, the executive branch is required to set up transition-related infrastructure at the White House and agencies no later than six months before the election.

Once formally nominated, Trump’s Democratic challenger will be given access by the federal government to office space, secure computers and other support to go full-steam ahead with transition planning.

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Democrats expect Trump to greenlight many last-minute regulatory changes and other initiatives to solidify his legacy in case he loses reelection. That’s not unprecedented — Obama did the same thing.

The challenge for a Democratic successor will be figuring out what happened that wasn’t made public, especially if Trump political appointees prove unhelpful and many top agency positions remain unfilled.

There are, of course, laws that govern how an outgoing administration handles the records it has created — what has to be archived, for how long it is classified, and what can be destroyed. The laws vary depending on whether they are being applied to specific White House offices or the executive branch agencies.

But Democrats are still worried that Trump and his aides will disregard or take advantage of any loopholes in those statutes.

“I would not be surprised if they try to destroy things they worked on, hide evidence or whatever,” the former senior Obama administration official said of Trump political appointees.

Democrats say one saving grace is the deep involvement of career government staffers in the transition process.

Those staffers are sworn to serve in a nonpartisan fashion, implementing the policies of whoever is in the White House. But Trump political appointees have never trusted them, denigrating career employees as members of a “deep state.”

The relationship between Trump political appointees and career staffers frayed further as some such staffers obeyed subpoenas to testify in the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. At one point, the White House called those witnesses “radical unelected bureaucrats.”

Democrats expect they will have to reach deep down into the career ranks to get basic information about policymaking under Trump. Democrats may want to start making lists now of career staffers so they’ll know who to talk to, several people said.

Another major concern is whether the documents produced by the Trump administration, not just for a possible transition but even sooner, are reliable.

There have been many instances of the Trump administration including incorrect information in everything from news releases to internal communications.

In one case, the administration acknowledged serious flaws in a report it issued implying a link between immigrants and terrorism, but it refused to take down the report or correct it.

