Kate Ackley
www.rollcall.com
Originally posted May 17, 2019
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, wants a status update on the state of the swamp in the Trump administration.
The Maryland Democrat launched an investigation late this week into the administration’s use of ethics waivers, which allow former lobbyists to work on matters they handled in their previous private sector jobs. Cummings sent letters to the White House and 24 agencies and Cabinet departments requesting copies of their ethics pledges and details of any waivers that could expose “potential conflicts of interest.”
“Although the White House committed to providing information on ethics waivers on its website, the White House has failed to disclose comprehensive information about the waivers,” Cummings wrote in a May 16 letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
A White House official declined comment on the investigation, and a committee aide said the administration had not yet responded to the requests. A spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight panel, did not immediately provide a comment.
After President Donald Trump ran on a “drain the swamp” message, the Trump administration ushered in a tough-sounding ethics pledge through an executive order in January 2017 requiring officials to recuse themselves from participating in matters they had lobbied on in the previous two years. But the waivers allow appointees to circumvent those restrictions.
The info is here.
