Who Oversees The President's Ethics?

Alina Selyukh and Lucia Maffei
Maine Public
Originally published March 27, 2017

President Trump continues to own hundreds of businesses around the world, and he has staffed his administration with wealthy people who have ties to a complex web of companies. Those financial entanglements have prompted government ethics experts to raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

They are worried that this president is violating the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars elected officials from benefiting from foreign governments. Also, in various legal filings and lawsuits, they have raised questions about whether the financial interests of the president and his appointees may be influencing public policy.

As NPR and other media outlets continue to cover these concerns and conflicts of interest, a question frequently arises: Who oversees the ethics of the president and other high-ranking officials? Who has the power to investigate or enforce ethics rules and laws?

The answer can be as entangled as the government bureaucracies involved. Of course, the media, whistleblowers and the courts are key elements of the accountability ecosystem. A number of agencies or government bodies also have a hand in holding presidents and appointees accountable on ethics and conflicts of interest. But a few play an outsize role — though only some of them have direct purview over the activities of the president.

Below is a reference sheet.

The article is here.

Devin Nunes and the Ethics Watchdogs

Ryan Lizza
The New Yorker
Originally posted April 11, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Before taking office, Trump ignored the advice of the federal Office of Government Ethics, which publicly pressed him to operate under the same rules required for his Cabinet members and to fully divest from his business interests. As a result, a key question of the Trump era is whether he might be in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits officials from receiving gifts from foreign states, when, for instance, foreign diplomats pay for rooms at Trump hotels. In January, crew filed a lawsuit over the emoluments issue, though several legal scholars have noted that the group may have a tough time making the case that it has standing to sue Trump.

Eisen, who is unfailingly optimistic, disagrees. “I think that the public awareness of this unethical governing environment has something to do with Trump’s mid-thirties approval ratings,” he said. “I think that our emoluments case is going to be the most impactful of all.”

The article is here.

GAO to Review Ethics, Funding of Trump Transition

Eric Katz
Government Executive
Originally published April 11, 2017

The federal government’s internal auditor is commencing a review of President Trump’s transition into office, examining potential conflicts of interest, contacts with foreign government and funding sources.

The Government Accountability Office is launching the review after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., requested it. GAO will determine how the General Services Administration managed the transition and its funding mechanisms, what Trump’s transition spent those funds on and how much private funding it collected. The auditors will also probe the Office of Government Ethics to evaluate what information it made available to the transition team and to what extent Trump’s associates took advantage of OGE’s offerings versus the previous two transitions.

The article is here.

Bannon May Have Violated Ethics Pledge by Communicating With Breitbart

Lachlan Markay
Daily Beast
Originally published March 30, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Bannon, Breitbart’s former chairman, has spoken directly to two of the company’s top editors since joining the White House. Trump’s predecessor publicly waived portions of the ethics pledge for similar communications, but the White House confirmed this week that it has not done so for Bannon.

“It seems to me to be a very clear violation,” Richard Painter, who was White House counsel for President George W. Bush, told The Daily Beast in an interview.

A White House spokesperson confirmed that every Trump appointee has signed the ethics pledge required by an executive order imposed by the president in January. No White House employees have received waivers to the pledge, the spokesperson added.

All incoming appointees are required to certify that they “will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients.”

The article is here.

Ousted national security adviser didn't sign ethics pledge

By Julie Bykowicz
Associate Press
Originally posted March 22, 2017

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn did not sign a mandatory ethics pledge ahead of his forced resignation in February, raising questions about the White House's commitment to the lobbying and ethics rules it imposed as part of the president's promise to "drain the swamp."

Flynn "didn't have the opportunity to sign it," said Price Floyd, a spokesman for the retired Army general. "But he is going to abide by the pledge" and has not engaged in any lobbying work since leaving the White House that would have violated the pledge, Floyd said.

Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 28 prohibiting political appointees from lobbying the government in any way for five years after serving in his administration. That same order instituted a lifetime ban on outgoing officials representing foreign governments.

The article is here.

Ethics Watchdogs Want U.S. Attorney To Investigate Trump's Business Interests

Jim Zarolli
NPR.org
Originally published March 8, 2017

With Congress showing no signs of taking action, a group of ethics watchdogs is turning to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to look into whether President Trump's many business interests violate the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"Published reports indicate that the Trump Organization and related Trump business entities have been receiving payments from foreign government sources which benefit President Trump through his ownership of the Trump Organization and related business entities," according to a letter sent to Bharara.

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The Emoluments Clause says that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the U.S. government], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

The letter says "there is no question" the clause applies to Trump and that he is violating it, because of the Trump Organization's extensive business operations, many of them tied to foreign governments.

The article is here.

Is the Trump Administration Skirting Its Own Ethics Rules?

The hiring of three former lobbyists to work in the White House raises questions about the president’s executive order on ethics.

Justin Elliott
The Pacific Standard
Originally published on March 7, 2017

The Trump administration appears to be either ignoring or exempting top staffers from its own watered-down ethics rules.

As we have detailed, President Donald Trump in January issued an order weakening Obama-era ethics policies, allowing lobbyists to work at agencies they had sought to influence. The Trump order did limit what lobbyists could do once they entered government, banning them from directly handling issues on which they had lobbied.

But the administration may not be even following that.

We’ve found three hires announced this week who, in fact, are working on the same issues on which they were registered lobbyists while in the private sector.

The article is here.

South Dakota Republicans are about to get rid of the state’s first independent ethics commission

By Amber Phillips
The Washington Post
Originally posted January 24, 2017

South Dakota Republicans are on the verge of doing something that backfired spectacularly for congressional Republicans earlier this year: Getting rid of an independent ethics commission.

What is a politically tricky endeavor for any lawmaking body could be even more precarious for the state's lawmakers, given that the commission they want to cut was approved by 51 percent of voters in a ballot initiative this November. The independent commission was part of a larger voter-approved ethics reform package that put limits on campaign finance and lobbying access.

State lawmakers met Monday to debate repeal of the entire law, and Republican leaders say the bill could be on the governor's desk by the end of the week. Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) has indicated he would sign a repeal. In his December budget address, he lambasted the ethics package, declaring that voters were “hoodwinked by scam artists who grossly misrepresented these proposed measures.”

The article is here.

In ethics debate, what to disclose at issue

By David Saleh Rauf
The Houston Chronicle
Originally posted May 28, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

More than 30,350 certificates have been filed with the ethics commission, a process Capriglione says is "like watching transparency happen every single day."

However, implementing the far-reaching law has proven complicated. Regulators have been inundated with questions since the law touches on contracts approved by state agencies, cities, counties, school districts or any special districts like a water authority.

Industry groups, which unsuccessfully waged a late attempt to have Abbott veto the law, said they have been unsure of what to disclose.

The article is here.

How Corrupt Is Your State?

by AJ Vicens
Moyers and Company
Originally posted November 10, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

That’s according to the State Integrity Investigation, a sweeping project released today by the nonprofit investigative reporting group the Center for Public Integrity. The Washington, DC-based Center worked with experienced journalists in every state (but not the District of Columbia) to assess state government rules and systems that were in place between January 2013 and March 2015. The journalists combed through records and laws, using 245 specific “indicators” that measured transparency and accountability, for example public access to information or state lobbying disclosure laws. Good government experts in each state, and later editors at Global Integrity, a government watchdog that tracks governmental accountability around the world, then reviewed the assessments for consistency and accuracy. Each state was assigned an overall letter grade, but also scores on 13 subcategories that include political finance, election oversight, lobbying, and ethics, among others.

The entire article is here.