CBS News (“Trump ousts director of Office of Government Ethics“):
President Trump on Monday removed the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the independent agency responsible for overseeing ethics rules and financial disclosures for the executive branch.
“OGE has been notified that the President is removing David Huitema as the director of OGE,” the office said in a notice on its website. “OGE is reverting to an Acting Director.”
Huitema was appointed to a five-year term by former President Biden. He was confirmed by the Senate in November 2024 and sworn in on December 16, 2024. The office’s website initially listed Shelley Finlayson as its acting director. Finlayson has been at the agency since 2006, serving most recently as chief of staff. But Mr. Trump signed a document Monday evening tapping Doug Collins, a Republican former member of Congress and current Department of Veterans Affairs secretary, to be the acting director of OGE
The vagueness of the timeline of Huitema’s appointment raised a red flag. But, no, he was not a lame duck appointment. Far from it. His Wiki page notes that he was nominated September 5, 2023—fourteen months before the election—but not confirmed by the Senate (on a purely party-line vote) until November 14, 2024. It appears that he has been in government service since 2006 (i.e., the second term of George W. Bush) in various legal advisory roles. In short, there’s just no reason to think he is some sort of partisan hack.
The move to oust Huitema comes two weeks after Mr. Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general from their roles as watchdogs without explanation, and as Mr. Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency task force have upended multiple government agencies.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OGE collects both confidential and public financial disclosures, as well as ethics agreements and other forms from government officials, from the president and vice president to high-ranking appointees and Cabinet nominees. The office works to identify and prevent conflicts of interest.
“The primary mission of the executive branch ethics program is to prevent conflicts of interest on the part of executive branch employees, by working to ensure that they make impartial decisions based on the public interest, serve as good stewards of public resources, and loyally adhere to the Constitution and laws of the United States,” OGE’s mission statement reads.
Six months into Mr. Trump’s first term in 2017, Walter Shaub resigned as the head of OGE, saying the Trump White House abandoned the “norms and ethical traditions of the executive branch that have made our ethics program the gold standard in the world until now.”
Good government groups raised concerns about the removal of accountability officials at government agencies without explanation.
AP (“With firings and lax enforcement, Trump moving to dismantle government’s public integrity guardrails“):
In the first three weeks of his administration, President Donald Trump has moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government’s public integrity guardrails that he frequently tested during his first term but now seems intent on removing entirely.
In a span of hours on Monday, word came that he had forced out leaders of offices responsible for government ethics and whistleblower complaints. And in a boon to corporations, he ordered a pause to enforcement of a decades-old law that prohibits American companies from bribing foreign governments to win business. All of that came on top of the earlier late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general who are tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at government agencies.
It’s all being done with a stop-me-if-you-dare defiance by a president who the first time around felt hemmed in by watchdogs, lawyers and judges tasked with affirming good government and fair play. Now, he seems determined to break those constraints once and for all in a historically unprecedented flex of executive power.
“It’s the most corrupt start that we’ve ever seen in the history of the American presidency,” said Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic who was a legal adviser to Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment.
“The end goal is to avoid accountability this time,” said Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer. “Not just being protected by his party and counting on the public to move on when scandals or problems emerge, but this time by actually removing many of the key figures whose job it is to oversee” his administration.
Zelizer added: “It’s a much bolder assertion than in his first term, and if successful and if all these figures are removed, you’ll have a combination of an executive branch lacking independent voices that will keep their eye on the ball and then a congressional majority that at least thus far isn’t really going to cause problems for him.”
To some degree, Trump’s early actions reflect a continuation of the path he blazed in his first term, when he dismissed multiple key inspectors general — including those leading the Defense Department and intelligence community — and fired an FBI director and an attorney general amid a Justice Department investigation into his ties between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
This time, though, his administration has moved much more swiftly in reprisal against those he feels previously wronged him — or still could.
CNBC (“Trump signs order pausing enforcement of foreign bribery ban“):
President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice to pause enforcing a nearly half-century-old law that prohibits American companies and foreign firms from bribing officials of foreign governments to obtain or retain business.
“It sounds good, but it hurts the country,” Trump said of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as he signed the order at the White House.
“Many, many deals are unable to be made because nobody wants to do business, because they don’t want to feel like every time they pick up the phone, they’re going to jail,” Trump said, referring to U.S. anti-corruption efforts.
A White House official told CNBC, “A pause in enforcement to better understand how to streamline the FCPA to make sure it’s in line with economic interests and national security.”
The pause in criminal prosecutions under the FCPA is being implemented to avoid putting U.S. businesses at an economic disadvantage to foreign competitors.
The FCPA’s intent is in part to prevent American firms from fueling rampant public corruption that undermines the rule of law in many parts of the world. Over time, the FCPA’s rules have grown into bedrock principles of how American businesses operate overseas.
The FCPA became law in 1977, barring all Americans and certain foreign issuers of securities from paying bribes to foreign officials. The law was amended in 1998 to apply to foreign firms and people who caused such bribes to take place within the United States.
The broadly written law applies not only to direct bribes that are paid, but also to bribes that are offered or planned or authorized by a company’s management.
NYT (“Justice Dept. Tells Prosecutors to Drop Federal Corruption Case Against Eric Adams“):
The Justice Department on Monday told federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. It claimed his indictment last fall came too close to the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary and limited his ability to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The move came after Mr. Adams, a Democrat running for re-election, had made repeated overtures to Mr. Trump. The mayor met with Mr. Trump near his Mar-a-Lago estate last month in an unusual display of political — and perhaps personal — outreach. Then he attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration and told reporters he would not publicly criticize the president. The request to drop the charges raises urgent questions about the administration of justice during Mr. Trump’s second term and the independence of federal prosecutors.
In a memo sent to prosecutors Monday evening, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove, ordered the government to restore Mr. Adams’s security clearance, and accused the former Manhattan federal prosecutor who charged Mr. Adams of having done so for political reasons, though he offered no evidence.
NPR (“Trump pardons disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich“):
President Trump has pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption-related crimes, including trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat vacated by former President Barack Obama.
Blagojevich served as the state’s governor from 2003-’09. It was a political saga toward the end of his time in office.
In 2008, federal prosecutors accused Blagojevich of turning Illinois’ government into a moneymaking operation for himself by trying to, among other things, shake down a children’s hospital and racetrack owners. When prosecutors charged Blagojevich with corruption over the Senate seat, they presented as evidence a profanity-filled telephone conversation he had that was secretly recorded by the FBI.
“I mean, I’ve got this thing, and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing,” Blagojevich said.
He argued that he simply engaged in political horse-trading, and he went on a national publicity tour to proclaim his innocence.
Blagojevich was impeached and ousted as governor in January 2009 and then indicted that March. The following year, he appeared and was booted off Donald Trump’s reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice.
Blagojevich was convicted in 2011 and later sentenced to 14 years in prison. He served eight years, his time behind bars cut short after President Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence during his first term in office.
Many leading Illinois Democrats and Republicans criticized the move. The then-chairman of Illinois’ Republican Party said in a statement that in a state where corrupt machine style politics is all too common, it’s important that those found guilty serve their prison sentence in its entirety.
After he was released from prison, Blagojevich and his wife, Patti, held a news conference. He was a freed political prisoner, calling the criminal justice system both broken and unfair.
“We want to express our most profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump,” Blagojevich said. “How do you properly thank someone who has given you back the freedom that was stolen from you?”
The former Democratic governor also declared himself a “Trump-ocrat.”
President Trump said he was granting Blagojevich a full pardon. He called Blagojevich’s sentence a “terrible injustice” and he called the former Illinois governor, a nice man.
These stories seem vaguely connected but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
