Head of Government Ethics office publicly condemns Trump's non-divestment: 'Ethics has no party.'

Rss@dailykos.com (hunter) · Thursday, January 12, 2017, 9:15 am

The head of the Office of Government Ethics is not happy with Donald Trump's press-conference-announced schemes to turn his business operations over to his sons. And by not happy, we mean he blasted it, calling Trump's plan "perplexing", "meaningless", "wholly inadequate" and saying it "does not comport with the tradition of our Presidents over the past 40 years."

Stepping back from running his business is meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective. The Presidency is a full-time job and he would’ve had to step back anyway. The idea of setting up a trust to hold his operating businesses adds nothing to the equation. This is not a blind trust—it’s not even close.

I think Politico called this a “half-blind” trust, but it’s not even halfway blind. The only thing this has in common with a blind trust is the label, “trust.” His sons are still running the businesses, and, of course, he knows what he owns. His own attorney said today that he can’t “un-know” that he owns Trump tower. The same is true of his other holdings. The idea of limiting direct communication about the business is wholly inadequate. That’s not how a blind trust works. There’s not supposed to be any information at all. [...]

I was especially troubled by the statement that the incoming administration is going to demand that OGE approve a diversified portfolio of assets. No one has ever talked to us about that idea, and there’s no legal mechanism to do that. Instead, Congress set up OGE’s blind trust program under the Ethics in Government Act. Under that law anyone who wants a blind trust has to work with OGE from the start, but OGE has been left out of this process. We would have told them that this arrangement fails to meet the statutory requirements. [...]

For these reasons, the plan does not comport with the tradition of our Presidents over the past 40 years. This isn’t the way the Presidency has worked since Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in 1978 in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Since then, Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all either established blind trusts or limited their investments to non-conflicting assets like diversified mutual funds, which are exempt under the conflict of interest law.

This is the head of the office tasked with ensuring our public officials are not corrupt, saying in plain English in a public speech that Trump's supposed plan does not meet the standard of ensuring the soon-to-be president is not corrupt.

And he's calling both Trump and his supporting Republicans out on it, saying "ethics has no party.”

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