Tag Archives: ethics

Life after EPA: What is Scott Pruitt doing now?

by dla@kk2.pl Posted on December 28, 2018

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Ever wonder what happens to people when they get booted from President Trump’s graces? (They don’t all wind up with a Saturday Night Live trip down memory lane.)

It’s been almost six months since Scott Pruitt was cut loose as head of the EPA, and for the most part he’s been keeping out of the spotlight. According to sources, Pruitt is using his industry connections to launch a private consulting business — you know, promoting coal exports and consorting with coal barons, the way a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency would.

However, Pruitt’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, says these new career pursuits will stop short of violating an official five-year ban on lobbying the EPA. After a mess of ethics violations and legal scandals, Pruitt is proceeding with caution. Mitchell says: “He has discussed multiple opportunities with me and has been quite careful not to do anything that is even close to the line.”

Although Pruitt’s fall from grace hasn’t been memorialized on SNL, he did become the butt of a few jokes by someone else — his former bestie, Donald Trump.

Evidently, Trump has congratulated Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt’s replacement, several times for not trying to buy used mattress from Trump Hotel. Yep. Pruitt did that. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little reuse, reduce, recycle — it may turn out to be one of Pruitt’s better moves for the environment.

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Life after EPA: What is Scott Pruitt doing now?

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The EPA is riddled with conflicts of interest, according to new analysis.

by AlejandCarrol Posted on March 9, 2018

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The EPA is riddled with conflicts of interest, according to new analysis.

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The Dead Pool – 26 February 2017

by SylvestMccord Posted on February 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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Man of the people that he is, Donald Trump likes to pick rich guys for high-level positions in his administration. Unfortunately, that poses a problem:

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Navy secretary, investor Philip Bilden, is expected to withdraw from consideration, sources familiar with the decision told Politico, becoming the second Pentagon pick unable to untangle their financial investments in the vetting process….Like billionaire investment banker Vincent Viola, who withdraw his nomination to be secretary of the Army earlier this month, Bilden ran into too many challenges during a review by the Office of Government Ethics to avoid potential conflicts of interest, the sources said.

To become Secretary of State, maybe all this divesting of huge fortunes is worth it. But Navy Secretary? Probably not.

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The Dead Pool – 26 February 2017

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Government Ethics Watchdog Urges Trump to Investigate Conway and Consider Disciplining Her

by DenisBolt94 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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The government’s top ethics watchdog sent a letter to the White House on Tuesday stating that Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, almost certainly broke ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing line and that the administration should investigate her and consider disciplinary action.

Conway appeared on Fox & Friends last week to discuss the decision by the retail chain Nordstrom to drop Ivanka Trump’s clothing line from its stores. Standing in the White House briefing room in front of a presidential seal, Conway bragged that she owns Ivanka Trump clothing and urged viewers to purchase items from the president’s daughter’s line.

In the letter to Stefan Passantino, deputy counsel to the president and the White House’s designated ethics officer, Office of Government Ethics executive director Walter Shaub cited a rule forbidding executive branch employees from endorsing commercial products and pointed to a hypothetical example written into the regulation that’s nearly identical to Conway’s behavior.

“I note the OGE’s regulation on misuse of position offers as an example the hypothetical case of a Presidential appointee appearing in a television commercial to promote a product,” Shaub wrote. “Ms. Conway’s actions track that example almost exactly.”

While Democrats in Washington have criticized the Trump administration for a string of potential ethical lapses, Republicans have generally kept quiet. Conway’s comments, however, led to quick criticism from congressional Republicans, including House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, who together with the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings, sent a letter to Shaub recommending that he review the incident.

Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Conway had been “counseled” on the incident, but he did not elaborate on what that meant. Shaub, in his letter, said he has not been notified by the White House of any disciplinary action against Conway.

“Under the present circumstances, there is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct and that disciplinary action is warranted,” Shaub wrote.

The decision on whether to discipline Conway rests with the White House. Shaub requested notification by February 28 of any disciplinary action. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Government Ethics Watchdog Urges Trump to Investigate Conway and Consider Disciplining Her

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Top Government Ethics Official Blasts Trump’s Conflict of Interest Plan

by RichieStillwell Posted on January 11, 2017

Mother Jones

Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s new plan to handle his conflicts of interests on Wednesday. Trump laid out a plan earlier in the day to put his assets in a trust that his adult children control, with Trump receiving little information about the operations of the family business. At an event at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, Shaub said that Trump’s plan is not sufficient. “Nothing short of divestiture will resolve these conflicts,” he said. “This has been my position from the start.”

Shaub noted that the arrangement Trump unveiled at a Wednesday press conference should not be compared to a blind trust, which is overseen by an independent trustee who works to sell off assets and reduce conflicts. “This is not a blind trust,” Shaub remarked. “It’s not even close. It’s not even halfway blind. The only thing it has in common with a blind trust is the label ‘trust.'”

Shaub noted the pile of envelopes Trump had laid out next to the podium during his press event. Trump said each contained a legal agreement separating himself from one of his businesses. The sheer volume of these agreements, Shaub said, underscores the problem. Despite Trump’s proposed arrangement—which was presented at the press conference by a Washington tax lawyer named Sheri Dillon—Shaub suggested it was inevitable that some of these deals would end up posing conflicts.

He acknowledged the president and vice president are exempt from the conflict of interest rules that apply to all other federal employees, but he maintained that conflicts can still arise. He pointed out that having a president who voluntarily complies with the rules would set a positive tone and provide the OGE with an ally in enforcing ethics rules throughout the executive branch. Shaub cited a memo on presidents and conflicts of interest written by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that concluded that if presidents do not deal with their financial conflicts, they open themselves up to “damaging criticism.”

“The sheer obviousness of Scalia’s words become apparent if you just ask yourself one question: Should the president hold himself to a lower standard than his own appointees?” Shaub said.

Shaub said that Trump and his team did not consult him or the OGE while developing the plan. He challenged Dillon’s assertion that it would be too expensive and too complicated for Trump to divest all of his assets. “I wish she had spoken to those of us in government who do this for a living,” he said, pointing to all the other elected officials and federal employees who are forced to divest. Other federal officials have been unhappy about divesting, Shaub said, but “their basic patriotism usually prevails as they set aside their personal interests.”

“It’s important to know that the president is now entering a world of public service,” Shaub said. “He’s going to be asking his appointees to make sacrifices.” And Trump may well ask members of the military services to make sacrifices, too. “So, no,” Shaub said, “I don’t think divestiture is too great a cost to pay to be president of the United States of America.”

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Top Government Ethics Official Blasts Trump’s Conflict of Interest Plan

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Trump’s Business Plan Won’t Eliminate His Conflicts of Interest

by Isabelta5 Posted on January 11, 2017

Mother Jones

At a long-awaited press conference Wednesday, Donald Trump outlined an extensive list of steps he plans to take to separate himself from his business interests. But he stopped short of the one thing that ethics experts agree he needs to do to eliminate conflicts of interest: divest his billions in assets and debts and place the proceeds in a blind trust.

Standing in front of a large stack of papers and manila folders that he said represented agreements he has signed to separate himself from his businesses, Trump steadfastly insisted he did not have to take any measures to avoid conflicts because federal ethics rules do not apply to presidents or vice presidents. According to Trump and a lawyer he retained to devise a plan to limit his business conflicts, he was voluntarily taking steps to make sure there are no questions about whether he is acting in the public interest while in office. Under the plan detailed at the press conference, Trump’s assets will be placed into a trust that will be run by his sons and another Trump executive, and all of the Trump Organization’s deals will be vetted by an ethics adviser who will have the right to veto any new deals that might present a conflict.

But the Trump trust will not be a blind trust—that is, an entity run by an independent third party containing assets the beneficiary is unaware of. It will just be a trust. Many of Trump’s assets are already in a trust—the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust—but according to Trump and his attorney, Sheri Dillon, he won’t play a role in managing the new trust. Dillon said Trump will not be provided with detailed statements showing how his companies are performing. He will just receive updates showing the profits or losses of his assets.

Dillon also attempted to stave off concerns that Trump might violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving financial benefits from a foreign government. Ethics experts have pointed out that Trump’s financial entanglements may violate this provision. Among other things, he is part of a partnership that owes money to a government-owned Chinese bank. And foreign diplomatic delegations have rushed to book space at Trump’s new Washington, DC, hotel—seen by many as an attempt to curry favor. According to Dillon, Trump will donate all hotel profits connected to any foreign government to the US Treasury.

None of Trump’s proposals seemed to impress his critics. Norm Eisen, who served as a lead ethics attorney in Barack Obama’s administration, said the plan laid out by Trump and Dillon fails all five standards that he and Richard Painter, a former ethics attorney for the George W. Bush administration, laid out prior to the press conference.

“Tragically, the Trump plan to deal with his business conflicts announced today falls short in every respect,” Eisen said, calling it “an inadequate and scantily detailed ethics wall.”

“Mr. Trump’s ill-advised course will precipitate scandal and corruption,” Eisen added.

One of Trump’s most intractable conflicts of interest is the debt he owes to lenders around the globe. Trump has reported owing $713 million. His biggest lender is Deutsche Bank, the troubled German bank that recently agreed to a $7.2 billion settlement with the Justice Department for its role in the 2008 mortgage crisis. The bank remains under investigation by the Justice Department for possibly participating in an attempt to funnel money out of Moscow in defiance of international sanctions. Trump did not address the loans other than to say he believed his company has very little debt.

As he left the stage, Trump said he was happy to leave his sons in charge of his business empire and that he will judge how they have performed when he leaves the White House. “I hope they do a good job,” Trump said in closing, “but if they don’t a good job, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired!'”

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Trump’s Business Plan Won’t Eliminate His Conflicts of Interest

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Ethics Office Congratulates Trump for Something He’s Not Planning to Do

by AdamCelestine Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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This is weird as hell. Between 12:55 and 12:57 pm on the East Coast this afternoon, the Office of Government Ethics sent out a tweetstorm addressed to Donald Trump:

We can’t repeat enough how good this total divestiture will be….Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, very good for America!….OGE applauds the “total” divestiture decision. Bravo!….As we discussed with your counsel, divestiture is the way to resolve these conflicts….OGE is delighted that you’ve decided to divest your businesses. Right decision!….Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest . Good call!….this aligns with OGE opinion that POTUS should act as if 18 USC 208 applies. http://bit.ly/2fRpIG0….this divestiture does what handing over control could never have done….we told your counsel we’d sing your praises if you divested, we meant it.

Needless to say, Trump has made no decision to divest his holdings. He has said only that he plans to hand over control of “business operations” to his kids.

So what happened? Here’s a few theories:

  1. Trump really does plan to divest, and his lawyers have told OGE this. Then OGE screwed up and scheduled a tweetstorm about it before Trump’s announcement.
  2. OGE did this “accidentally” in order to put pressure on Trump to divest.
  3. OGE did this deliberately in order to put pressure on Trump to divest.
  4. Something else.

As near as I can tell, #4 is the winner. Here’s what the New York Times reports:

In a statement, Seth Jaffe, an agency spokesman, said that officials there were “excited” by Mr. Trump’s announcements on conflicts of interest and that the messages were not based on any information about the president-elect’s plans beyond what was shared on his Twitter feed.

Asked later about the disclosure of the advice that the Office of Government Ethics had given to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Mr. Jaffe said he could not provide additional comment. But the agency has left the posts on its official government account.

So…they just misinterpreted Trump’s tweets and got so excited that they couldn’t contain themselves. I can’t say that this seems especially likely, but I guess anything is possible.

UPDATE: NPR has more here. Their account seems to imply that maybe #3 is the right answer. If it is, then bravo. After all, if Donald Trump can make waves via Twitter, then so can everyone else.

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Ethics Office Congratulates Trump for Something He’s Not Planning to Do

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Campaign Finance Regulators Won’t Do Their Job. Can a Lawsuit Force Their Hand?

by FlorentShq Posted on December 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s a case that has haunted campaign finance watchdogs for years. The Commission on Hope, Growth, and Opportunity (CHGO) emerged in early 2010 as a nonprofit that would not engage in political work. Then, in the six weeks before the 2010 elections, the group spent about $4 million on political ads across 15 congressional races, all attacking Democrats. But in filings with the IRS, the group maintained that none of its spending was campaign-related, and it did not disclose any of its spending with the Federal Election Commission. Facing complaints from federal regulators, the group folded. Some of its key players—including Scott Reed, now a top strategist at the US Chamber of Commerce, and Wayne Berman, the chief fundraiser for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign—split more than $1 million in leftover funds. No one involved was ever sanctioned.

Almost all the money CHGO raised came from a single donor. The group’s ability to spring up, use secret money to influence elections, and then disappear provides a template for rich donors who want to pick off or boost candidates without revealing their political activity.

But one watchdog group, the Democratic-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), believes it has found a way to hold the group’s key players accountable. If successful, the effort could set its own template for forcing lax federal regulators to crack down on campaign finance violations by the types of outside groups that have been awash in money since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.

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Campaign Finance Regulators Won’t Do Their Job. Can a Lawsuit Force Their Hand?

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This New Hampshire Republican Should Be a 2016 Kingmaker. Instead, He’s Radioactive.

by BEIJoellen Posted on June 8, 2015

Mother Jones

As the sole GOP congressman from New Hampshire, Rep. Frank Guinta should be having plenty of fun in the run-up to the state’s bellwether primary. Ordinarily, Republican presidential hopefuls would be lining up to woo him for his endorsement and begging him to host events to introduce them to New Hampshire voters. Instead, he has quickly become one of the state’s least popular Republicans, due to a campaign finance scandal that threatens to derail Guinta’s political career.

The other Republican in New Hampshire’s congressional delegation, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, has called on Guinta to resign. Meanwhile, the publisher of the famously conservative New Hampshire Union Leader, who has steadfastly supported Guinta’s political career since his days as mayor of Manchester, recently signed his name to a brutal six-word editorial about Guinta: “Frank Guinta is a damned liar.”

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This New Hampshire Republican Should Be a 2016 Kingmaker. Instead, He’s Radioactive.

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Watch Anita Sarkeesian Explain Gamergate’s “Attacks on Women” and Convince Colbert He’s a Feminist

by Gregory2612 Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist critic at the center of the Gamergate controversy, appeared on The Colbert Report last night to explain the sexual harassment issues rampant in the gaming world and why women aren’t going to just accept a “separate but equal” community.

“Women are perceived as threatening because we are asking for games to be more inclusive,” Sarkeesian said. “We are asking for games to acknowledge that we exist and that we love games.”

But as recent disturbing events have shown, many gamers are not pleased with Sarkeesian’s work and have been launching extremely violent messages against her and her supporters via social media. Earlier this month, Sarkeesian was forced to cancel a speaking engagement after an anonymous email threatened to stage the “deadliest mass shooting in American history” if she spoke.

Speaking to Colbert on Wednesday, she went on to reject the defense that Gamergate is actually about ethics in video game journalism.

“That is sort of a compelling way to reframe the fact that this is actually an attack on women,” she said.”Ethics in journalism is not what’s happening in any way. It’s actually men going after women in really hostile, aggressive ways. That’s what Gamergate is about. it’s about terrorizing women for being involved in this industry.”

For more a deeper dive into the Gamergate controversy, check out our excellent explainer.

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously quoted Sarkeesian in the headline. This has since been corrected.

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Watch Anita Sarkeesian Explain Gamergate’s “Attacks on Women” and Convince Colbert He’s a Feminist

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