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In a blistering four-page statement issued Wednesday, U.S. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter M. Shaub said that President-elect Trump’s plans to address the conflicts of interest posed by his business interests are "wholly inadequate," adding that "nothing short of divestiture will resolve these conflicts."
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"You don’t hear about ethics when things are going well. You’ve been hearing a lot about ethics lately," Shaub said at the opening of his statement released Wednesday afternoon. "I need to talk about ethics today because the plan the president-elect has announced doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met."
In a press conference earlier on Wednesday, Trump’s personal tax lawyer Sheri Dillon outlined the broad strokes of the president-elect’s plans to address longstanding concerns about the innumerable conflicts of interest presented by his extensive business holdings.
In essence, Trump will hand over full control of his privately-held business to his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and will remove himself from the day-to-day operations of the Trump corporation.
However, Shaub said this arrangement "fails to meet the statutory requirements," adding that "stepping back from running his business is meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective."
Dillon’s much-anticipated announcement early Wednesday also seemed to walk back an earlier Trump promise that his company would make “no new deals” while he was in office, saying that this would now only apply to foreign deals and that the Trump corporation would continue to pursue domestic projects. Dillon added that all new business deals would have to be approved by an ethics advisor who will be named in the coming days. It was not clear what standards this unofficial ethics advisor will apply.
Shaub, who is the top ethics officer in the U.S. government in charge of maintaining ethics standards for 2.7 million executive branch employees, directly challenged Trump’s repeated claims during Wednesday's press conference that it was technically impossible for the president to have a conflict of interest.
"That is quite obviously not true," said Shaub, adding that, "common sense dictates that a president can, of course, have very real conflicts of interest."
Quoting from an opinion written by recently deceased far-right Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who Trump has repeatedly praised, Shaub pointed out "a president should avoid engaging in conduct prohibited by the government’s ethics regulations, even if they don’t apply. Justice Scalia warned us that there would be consequences if a president ever failed to adhere to the same standards that apply to lower level officials. The sheer obviousness of Justice Scalia’s words becomes apparent if you just ask yourself one question: Should a president hold himself to a lower standard than his own appointees?"
Current ethics laws state that federal employees are barred from working on any matter in which they could gain a financial benefit and that if they can’t recuse themselves from an issue, they must sell off their assets. During Wednesday’s press conference Dillion said that this statute explicitly excludes the president and vice president.
However, Shaub pointed out that the only reason why this statute doesn’t apply to the president is because "Congress understood that a president can’t recuse [themselves] without depriving the American people of the services of their leader." Shaub added that it has "been the consistent policy of the executive branch that the president should act as though the financial conflict of interest law applied."
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Shaub’s statement also pointed out that Trump’s arrangement threatens the entire system for avoiding public corruption in the U.S. “The potential for corruption only grows with the increase of power,” he said. "The ethics program starts at the top. The signals a president sends set the tone for ethics across the executive branch. Tone from the top matters. Officials in any administration need their president to show ethics matters, not only through words but also through deeds."
Just two weeks ago the newly elected Republican-controlled House of Representatives attempted to gut the congressional office of ethics oversight, a move which they only walked back after an unprecedented public outcry.
Shaub, who has served as top U.S. ethics officer for the past four years after rising up the ranks as a career government ethics officer, added that he was issuing his statement in the hopes that with “some constructive feedback on his plan, (Trump) may choose to make adjustments that will resolve his conflicts of interest.”
As of Wednesday neither President-elect Trump nor his lawyers had any reply to Shaub’s statement.
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