Steven Mnuchin’s financial disclosures haven’t earned ethics officials’ blessing. What’s the hold-up?

Carrie Levine
The Center for Public Integrity
Originally published March 8, 2019

The executive branch’s chief ethics watchdogs have yet to certify Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s annual financial disclosure — an unusually lengthy delay in finalizing a document they’ve had for more than eight months.

While the Office of Government Ethics won’t publicly explain the holdup, an analysis of Mnuchin’s disclosure, which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, identified entries that outside ethics experts say could be the hitch.

The disclosure statement covers Mnuchin’s 2017 personal finances, and Treasury’s own ethics officials certified it after finding no conflicts of interest.

Some entries on Mnuchin’s 53-page form involve Stormchaser Partners LLC, a film production company owned by Mnuchin’s wife, Louise Linton.

Mnuchin’s ethics agreement, negotiated when he joined the government, required him to step down from the chairmanship of Stormchaser Partners and divest his own ownership interest in it within 90 days of his confirmation in February 2017. (Mnuchin also agreed to divest dozens of other assets that ethics officials said potentially presented conflicts of interest or the appearance of one.)

The info is here. 

Federal ethics agency refuses to certify financial disclosure from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross

Jeff Daniels
CNBC.com
Originally published February 19, 2019

The government's top ethics watchdog disclosed Tuesday that it had refused to certify a financial disclosure report from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

In a filing, the Office of Government Ethics said it wouldn't certify the 2018 annual filing by Ross because he didn't divest stock in a bank despite stating otherwise. The move could have legal ramifications for Ross and add to pressure for a federal probe.

"The report is not certified," OGE Director Emory Rounds said in a filing, explaining that a previous document the watchdog received from Ross indicated he "no longer held BankUnited stock." However, Rounds said an Oct. 31 document "demonstrates that he did" still hold the shares and as a result, "the filer was therefore not in compliance with his ethics agreement at the time of the report."

A federal ethics agreement required that Ross divest stock worth between $1,000 and $15,000 in BankUnited by the end of May 2017, or within 90 days of the Senate confirming him to the Commerce post. He previously reported selling the stock twice, first in May 2017 and again in August 2018 as part of an annual disclosure required by OGE.

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What swamp? Lobbyists get ethics waivers to work for Trump

Associated Press
Originally posted March 9, 2017

President Donald Trump and his appointees have stocked federal agencies with ex-lobbyists and corporate lawyers who now help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks, despite promising as a candidate to drain the swamp in Washington.

A week after his January 2017 inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that bars former lobbyists, lawyers and others from participating in any matter they lobbied or otherwise worked on for private clients within two years before going to work for the government.

But records reviewed by The Associated Press show Trump's top lawyer, White House counsel Don McGahn, has issued at least 24 ethics waivers to key administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies.

Though the waivers were typically signed by McGahn months ago, the Office of Government Ethics disclosed several more on Wednesday.

One allows FBI Director Chris Wray "to participate in matters involving a confidential former client." The three-sentence waiver gives no indication about what Wray's conflict of interest might be or how it may violate Trump's ethics order.

Asked about the waivers, Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said, "In the interests of full transparency and good governance, the posted waivers set forth the policy reasons for granting an exception to the pledge."

The article is here.

Trump presidency spurs cottage industry of ethics watchdogs

Fredreka Schouten
USA Today
Originally posted November 23, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

The groups pursuing Trump say they are trying to keep close tabs on a president who is bucking ethical norms by retaining ownership of his businesses and abruptly firing FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the agency’s probe into the Russian government involvement in last year’s election.

“We are in a crisis of ethics,” said Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or CREW. “There are ethics a
nd conflicts and influence problems in this administration unlike any we have ever seen. And it began with the president’s decision not to divest from his businesses.”

White House officials this week contended that Trump is operating ethically. As an example, they point to his signing of a far-reaching ethics policy that, among other things, tries to slow the revolving door between government and industry by imposing a five-year cooling-off period before former government appointees can work as lobbyists.

“An organized onslaught from partisan groups committed to undermining the President’s agenda can’t change the fact that he has elevated ethics within this administration,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement.

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Ethics office: Anonymous gifts to legal defense funds are not allowed

Megan Wilson
The Hill
Originally posted September 28, 2017

The Office of Government Ethics (OGE), the federal government’s ethics watchdog, clarified its policy on legal defense funds on Thursday, stating that anonymous contributions should not be accepted.

The announcement comes after a report that suggested the OGE was departing from internal policy regarding the donations, paving the way for federal officials to accept anonymous donations from otherwise prohibited groups — such as lobbyists — to offset their legal bills.

In 1993, the OGE issued an informal advisory opinion that allowed for such donations because the federal employee “does not know who the paymasters are.”

Immediately after, the office acknowledged the problems associated with allowing prohibited individuals to give to legal defense funds anonymously and instead advised lawyers not to accept those contributions.

Then-OGE Director Stephen Potts told a congressional panel in 1994 that the agency “recognized that donor anonymity may be difficult to enforce in practice because there is nothing to prevent a donor disclosing to the employee that he or she contributed to the employee’s legal defense fund,” the advisory published Thursday notes.

The article is here.

Trump ethics watchdog moves to allow anonymous gifts to legal defense funds

Darren Samuelsohn
Politico
Originally published September 13, 2017

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics has quietly reversed its own internal policy prohibiting anonymous donations from lobbyists to White House staffers who have legal defense funds.

The little-noticed change could help President Donald Trump’s aides raise the money they need to pay attorneys as the Russia probe expands — but raises the potential for hidden conflicts of interest or other ethics trouble.

“You can picture a whole army of people with business before the government willing to step in here and make [the debt] go away,” said Marilyn Glynn, a former George W. Bush-era acting OGE director who worked in the office for 17 years.

Lawyer fees have long been the source of controversy for presidents under fire. Richard Nixon’s White House took covert steps to pay the Watergate burglars, and a trust set up during Bill Clinton’s first term to deal with Whitewater and other controversies had to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from a controversial Arkansas friend who was later indicted for campaign finance abuses.

At issue for the Trump staffers is a 1993 OGE guidance document that gave a green light to organizers of legal defense funds for government employees to solicit anonymous donations from otherwise prohibited sources — like lobbyists or others with business before the government. That Clinton-era opinion reasoned that if such donors were anonymous, such donations could be legal because the employee “does not know who the paymasters are.”

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What do White House Rules Mean if They Can Be Circumvented?

Sheelah Kolhatkar
The New Yorker
Originally posted June 6, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Each Administration establishes its own ethics rules, often by executive order, which go beyond ethics laws codified by Congress (those laws require such things as financial-disclosure forms from government employees, the divestiture of assets if they pose conflicts, and recusal from government matters if they intersect with personal business). While the rules established by law are hard and fast, officials can be granted waivers from the looser executive-order rules. The Obama Administration granted a handful of such waivers over the course of its eight years. What’s startling with the Trump White House is just how many waivers have been issued so early in Trump’s term—more than a dozen were disclosed last week, with another twenty-four expected this week, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal—as well as the Administration’s attempt to keep them secret, all while seeming to flout the laws that dictate how the whole system should work.

The ethics waivers made public last week apply to numerous officials who are now working on matters affecting the same companies and industries they represented before joining the Administration. The documents were only released after the Office of Government Ethics pressed the Trump Administration to make them public, which is how they have been handled in the past; the White House initially refused, attempting to argue that the ethics office lacked the standing to even ask for them. After a struggle, the Administration relented, but many of the waivers it released were missing critical information, such as the dates when they were issued. One waiver in particular, which appears to apply to Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, without specifically naming him, grants Administration staff permission to communicate with news organizations where they might have formerly worked (Breitbart News, in Bannon’s case). The Bannon-oriented waiver, issued by the “Counsel to the President,” contains the line “I am issuing this memorandum retroactive to January 20, 2017.”

Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, quickly responded that there is no such thing as a “retroactive” ethics waiver. Shaub told the Times, “If you need a retroactive waiver, you have violated a rule.”

The article is here.

Trump moves to block ethics inquiry centered on ex-lobbyists

Brandon Carter
The Hill
Originally published May 22, 2017

The White House is looking to block an effort from the government’s top ethics office to disclose the names of former lobbyists who have been granted waivers to work in the federal government, according to a new report.

The New York Times reports that the White House sent a letter to the head of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) challenging its legal authority to request that information.

“It is an extraordinary thing,” Walter Shaub Jr., the director of the ethics office, told the Times. “I have never seen anything like it.”

The letter sent by Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, questions whether the ethics office has the authority to demand information regarding ex-lobbyists who are currently working in the federal government.

The article is here.