"The Presidential Transition Act states that all records of transition operations are private and confidential."
Actually, at no point in either the original 1963 law or the 2000 update do the words "private" and/or "confidential" appear. Thus, the Act does not state that 'all records of transition operations' are private and confidential. Please see below for the text of the laws. There is no legal basis for that claim based upon the letter of the law, as it stands. As an aside, I would encourage reading Opinion pieces from any news organization through a very critical lens especially when they quote federal legal code. Federal law is widely available through official sources and searches can be easily conducted.
To read the full text of the 1963 law, see:
https://www.gsa.gov/governmentwide-initi...ct-of-1963
To read the 2000 update, see:
https://www.gsa.gov/governmentwide-initi...ct-of-2000
In addition, in this case the records relating to the transition of presidential authority held on a public (government) system have no reasonable expectation of privacy, which is the foundation for making the argument that a search could be considered unconstitutional. Based on the Constitution, it is inherently impossible for any search to be unconstitutional if no reasonable expectation of privacy exists. For information, see:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/expectation_of_privacy.
For background regarding reasonable expectation of privacy as it pertains to presidential transition GSA records, see:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/th...mf3dyMlwP; and the following quote.
Specifically, Loewentritt said, "in using our devices," transition team members were informed that materials "would not be held back in any law enforcement" actions. Loewentritt read to BuzzFeed News a series of agreements that anyone had to agree to when using GSA materials during the transition, including that there could be monitoring and auditing of devices and that, "Therefore, no expectation of privacy can be assumed."
Another point - the Trump legal team makes the following argument: The letter also makes a specific claim about communication between the government and the campaign — that Richard Beckler, then the general counsel of the GSA, "acknowledged unequivocally to [the Trump campaign's] legal counsel" in a June 15 discussion that the Trump campaign "owned and controlled" emails, and that "any requests for the production of PTT [Presidential Transition Team] records would therefore be routed to legal counsel for [the Trump campaign]." A discussion and "acknowledgement" is not legally binding, especially when it pertains to federal law and public authority wherein a large amount of legal code already exists, governing the aforementioned.