Senators Murray, Cantwell Demand Explanation of White House Attempt to Block Ethics Waiver Disclosure
Press Release
"If the White House succeeds in blocking the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) from discovering who has received waivers of President Donald Trump's ethics pledge, we will get it ourselves," said Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Patty Murray (D-WA) and a group of 16 of their Senate colleagues in a letter to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney today. Their letter comes in response to Mulvaney's request to "stay" OGE's collection of information on executive branch ethics waivers, which previous presidents made public as a matter of course. The Senators demand a thorough explanation of OMB's request by week's end.
The letter was also signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tom Udall (D-NM), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Gary Peters (D-MI).
"A pledge that allows for secret waivers is, quite obviously, meaningless," the Senators write, adding that they will go directly to federal agencies' ethics officials if OGE is blocked. "On April 20, 2017, several of us wrote to President Trump urging him to make waivers to his ethics pledge public. Your letter of May 17 suggests that rather than working with Congress to ensure the highest ethical standards in the Trump Administration you are willing to take whatever steps you can to hide potential conflicts of interest from view."
So far, dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers have assumed positions in the Trump administration. Without knowing who has been granted waivers from the ethics pledge, there is no way to determine whether officials are violating federal ethics rules. "It is an extraordinary thing," said OGE Director Walter Shaub of the effort to deny OGE the waivers. "I have never seen anything like it." OGE was granted power to request information such as ethics waivers in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Source