Specific rules and protocols aside, the basic ethics code for government is to provide service to the public, not to gild the financial future of our elected leaders and friends.
That was the thinking behind Donald Trump’s big public show at the start of his first term of putting The Trump Organization in the hands of his sons and away from the White House.
As we saw his administration unfold, those ethical lines came and went along with transactions of passing interest, exorbitant hotel rentals to the Secret Service and foreign visitors, and post-administration deals that have continued to benefit Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and investments by Trump’s company, among other financial dealings that draw criticism under a lumped “grifting” complaint that continue to spill out today. There are Trump Bibles, sneakers, coins, digital cards and more for sale, as if the presidency is a constant Black Friday sale.
This time around, the Trump transition team had resisted even signing the required General Services Administration documents meant to swear off potential conflicts for weeks, delaying the on-the-groundwork of transfer of power among federal agencies to designated Cabinet members and heads of departments.
Several weeks after the election, Team Trump finally presented an ethics plan, but it includes nothing about Trump himself, prompting criticism from such groups as the Campaign Legal Center over lack of transparency and CREW over potential legal consequences for Trump.
As The New York Times reported, a check of records and statements indicates that this time around, The Trump Organization aims to issue a more limited ethics plan that still allows Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to pursue international deals — even if they run afoul of other government programs or prohibitions. Eric Trump, who is running the company, is “expected to forgo deals directly with foreign governments. But he is not planning to revive the promise the company made eight years ago to swear off all other foreign deals while his father occupies the White House.”
As president, Trump legally can skirt conflict of interest laws that would otherwise require a senior federal official to sell holdings in companies that might benefit from his actions. It has been left to individual presidents to voluntarily take such action.
Hidden in Plain Sight
As a matter of practical politics, Trump is engendering so many other controversies at once as to make mere financial gain while in office seem a lesser target of concern.
Trump’s choices for his inner circle are replete with financial conflicts with existing government programs, policies and contracts. Nevertheless, what controversy has arisen over some of the more contentious appointees have involved their personal behaviors and some of their expressed disdain for the agencies they would head. There has been less said to date about direct or indirect conflicts of business interests with the public’s business.
The most glaring of these involve Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump whisperer, whose holdings in social media, electric car manufacture, space and defense contracting bring him into direct conflict between serving the public interest and serving his own. Musk is being kept to an advisory role, which puts him outside of any binding ethical rules or Senate confirmation or oversight.
Nevertheless, Musk has the assignment to lead a government cut program on the scale of a business takeover. That means as head of Space X, he will review NASA spending, or as the brain behind Tesla, he will be reviewing tax credits for electric vehicles and all kinds of rules that will affect his car manufacturing rivals. As a major defense contractor, he will be looking at enforcement of contractor rules at the Defense Department.
His companies are major government contractors, taking in nearly $20 billion over the past 16 years, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Over the past decade, SpaceX alone received $14.4 billion from NASA and $5.3 billion from the Department of Defense. A New York Times analysis found that Musk’s companies had nearly 100 contracts with 17 federal agencies, totaling $3 billion. Tesla, Musk’s electric car maker, has received $41.9 million in federal contracts since 2008, including $13.6 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, $10.8 million from NASA and $9 million from the Department of Defense. Since 2010, the company has been the biggest beneficiary of federal tax credits on electric vehicle purchases.
A Bitcoin Reserve Bill by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., would require the U.S. Treasury to buy one million Bitcoins over five years and be held for at least 20 years — a blatant industry-specific bailout of holders of cryptocurrency, according to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. As of Friday, Bitcoin was trading at $100,000, which means purchasing that many Bitcoins at that rate would cost $100 billion, Mediaite reported. Both Trump sons and Musk have crypto businesses.
Built-in Conflicts
You could see much of the same in the selections for people to run various health, environmental and energy sectors. Trump has drawn many of his loyalist appointees from the ranks of successful businesspeople who have done deals with the agencies or rules that they now would oversee.
That may not be unusual for either party, but what is different is the public disdain in shunning any interest in protecting the people’s interest over personal gain.
Cabinet secretaries are required to file a form disclosing how much money they make, the value of what they and spouses and children own, the amount of debts they owe, and the gifts the receive. The reason is not invasion of privacy, it is meant as a guidepost for serving voters rather than self.
Federal law prohibits government officials from participating in activities that affect their financial interests, enforceable by prosecution. That’s why turning a blind eye to such rules matters.
Just yesterday, Trump’s businesses were sending out a pitch for a perfume at $199 that was being advertised with an image of Trump sitting with a smiling Jill Biden at the Notre Dame renovation ceremony. It seems doubtful that she was asked to approve, but why is the incoming president of the United States hawking a Trump perfume?
The Trump approach makes it almost a joke that a minute ago, Trump was insisting on rooting out Joe Biden’s supposed crossing of ethical lines — corruption, Trump said — in allowing his son, Hunter, to suggest that closeness with his dad would help in his international business dealings a decade ago.
Sharp government, nonprofit and journalistic reporting will be required to match the financial interests of specific individuals in the inner circle to the fate of programs aimed at serving the public.
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