Thread: Blizzard of ethics complaints filed against Trump administration

Blizzard of ethics complaints filed against Trump administration

NBC News Adam Eldeman Mar 26th 2018 9:34AM

A prominent government watchdog group has filed 30 ethics complaints with various federal agencies — including the White House — alleging that employees are working in violation of President Donald Trump's executive order intended to "drain the swamp" and keep government free of former lobbyists.
The group, Public Citizen, filed the complaints in recent days, charging possible violations of ethics rules that Trump announced just days into his presidency.

The complaints, obtained by NBC News, cite Executive Order No. 13770, which effectively barred former lobbyists from being appointed, without a waiver, to governmental positions in which they would manage issues they'd lobbied on within the past two years.

Last summer, Public Citizen identified 36 lobbyists who'd been tapped for government jobs dealing with issues they'd lobbied on, and only six of those appointees have received waivers since then, the group said.

"These 30 apparent violations of Trump's own ethics rules are only the tip of the iceberg," said Craig Holman, co-author of the June 2017 report and lobbyist for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division.
Holman added that the Trump administration had issued the waivers only to appointees whose apparent violations had received attention and scrutiny through media reports.

One individual cited by Public Citizen was Byron Anderson, a special assistant to the Secretary of Labor, who the group said "appears to be working on the same specific issue areas he had lobbied on within the last two years, and has not received a waiver from the ethics rules." According to Anderson's LinkedIn profile, he worked as a vice president, federal affairs at a firm called Transamerican until January 2017.
Another individual cited for the same reason was Andrew Wheeler, who worked as a lobbyist for the coal industry as recently as May 2017, according to Bloomberg News.

The group also filed complaints citing employees at the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Interior, Energy, Education, Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Public Citizen has sent the complaints to ethics officers at each agency where the appointees are working, requesting that they investigate.

The White House has not responded to a request for comment.

"The bottom line is that neither Trump nor his administration take conflicts of interest and ethics seriously," said Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen. "'Drain the swamp' was far more campaign rhetoric than a commitment to ethics, and the widespread lack of compliance and enforcement of Trump's ethics executive order shows that ethics do not matter in the Trump administration."

Trump has come under frequent criticism from watchdog and oversight groups, as well as Democrats, for not making good on the promise to make government a lobbyist-free zone.

Many of the president's Cabinet heads and aides have routinely raised legal and ethical questions. For example, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned after just eight months on the job amid a public outcry over his use of private jets to conduct government business, which cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have also come under scrutiny for paying for the use of private jets with taxpayer money.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/03/26/blizzard-of-ethics-complaints-filed-against-trump-administration/23395432/

The evidence that Trump was less than honest with us during his campaign is really starting to pile up.

Stormy Daniel ain't going away. She passed a lie detector test but kind of looks drugged - surely enough of a stress reducing drug could give a false test and assume she was not tested for drugs as it was not a law enforcement conducted test. Does she lie? Her story seems to be ever changing from one night stand to a relationship over '06-'07. In seeing a clip of her interview on 60 min, her eye pupils were huge, that is not normal and often a sign of substances or overactive thyroid condition, especially when the tv lights should reduce the pupil size.

story at link
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43479597

Ironically, on New Years Eve being with a group of people, conversation, tv, music, etc, there was an astrologer being interviewed on tv re the upcoming years events- could pick up some of what she was saying. This woman stated that trump would have a big issue late in Jan involving an affair that will eventually bring him down. Well, there is talk @ where the money came from to pay her the $130k possibly being a big problem.
Does the Stormy Daniels scandal matter? The $130,000 payment and more, after '60 Minutes'

Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY Published 4:06 p.m. ET March 12, 2018 | Updated 9:27 a.m. ET March 26, 2018

WASHINGTON — Stormy Daniels' highly anticipated 60 Minutes interview offered salacious details about the porn star's alleged tryst with Donald Trump, including her memorable account of playfully spanking the future president with a magazine.
But the greatest potential legal jeopardy for Trump and his allies surrounds the $130,000 payment she received from Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen 11 days before the election to keep silent about the alleged affair.


"The payment of the money just creates an enormous legal mess for I think Trump, for Cohen and anyone else who was involved in this in the campaign," Trevor Potter, a veteran campaign-finance lawyer and former Federal Election Commission chairman, said on the CBS program.
The watchdog group Common Cause already has filed complaints with the commission and the Department of Justice, arguing that the payment violates election laws. Another group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), argues that Trump may have run afoul of rules requiring him to list his personal debts on a financial disclosure form.


Here’s a look at the some of the potential areas of legal risk for Trump and Cohen:
An excessive campaign contribution?

Under federal law, an individual could not donate more than $2,700 directly to Trump’s primary or general election campaign in 2016. A $130,000 payment would far exceed that limit.
But federal investigators would have to weigh whether the payment was, indeed, about influencing the election. In her lawsuit, Daniels says it was.


Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said the affair began in 2006 and lasted into 2007. But she said Trump and Cohen “aggressively sought to silence” her in October 2016 — a decade after the alleged relationship began — to help “ensure he won the presidential election.”
Just days before the election, Daniels and Cohen signed what she calls a “hush” agreement. The money paid to Daniels flowed through Essential Consultants, a limited liability company Cohen created in Delaware several weeks before the election.


"It's very strong evidence that this was about the election," said Larry Noble, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer who is now senior director of the non-profit Campaign Legal Center. "If he was not running for election, they would not have done this."
If the $130,000 payment came from Trump himself, the payment did not violate the law on contribution limits. Candidates can put unlimited amounts of their own money into campaigns.
But Trump’s campaign, and Cohen, could be in legal jeopardy if Cohen, or another unnamed party, was the source of the money.


Cohen has offered partial explanations about the source of the funds. Earlier this year, he said he used his own money to “facilitate” the payment and was not reimbursed by either Trump’s company or the Trump campaign. He has since offered more detail, saying he used a home-equity line of credit to pull together the money to pay Daniels.


And in a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Cohen insisted he acted on his own and without Trump's knowledge at the time of the payment.
“People are mistaking this for a thing about the campaign,” Cohen told the magazine. “What I did defensively for my personal client, and my friend, is what attorneys do for their high-profile clients. I would have done it in 2006. I would have done it in 2011. I truly care about him and the family—more than just as an employee and an attorney.”


Cohen's statements have been silent on whether Trump — or anyone else — paid him back later. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported that Cohen complained to friends after the election that he had not been reimbursed.
Cohen has not responded to USA TODAY's questions about possible reimbursement.
Did Trump's company play a role?

Federal law prohibits corporations and labor groups from donating directly to candidates. Companies and unions also are barred from “facilitating the making of contributions to candidates or political committees.”


Cohen, who served as a top lawyer with the Trump Organization in 2016, has said the company was not involved. But an email released by Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti shows Cohen using a Trump Organization email address as he worked to arrange the payment to Daniels.
Cohen said he often used his work address for personal business. "I sent emails from the Trump Org email address to my family, friends as well as Trump business emails," he told ABC News. "I basically used it for everything."
Noble, the former FEC official, said regulators might not look askance at the mere use of the corporate email account. "If it was one or two emails, I would say 'no,' " he said. But they might want to know whether it represents a larger role by the company, he added.
In February, another Trump Organization lawyer filed a legal document in a secret arbitration proceeding to block Daniels from talking about the alleged relationship. Company officials say that attorney, Jill Martin, acted in her personal capacity and that the Trump Organization is not representing any party in the Daniels' dispute.

Disclosure violations?

A variety of federal laws demand truth-telling when reporting information to the government.
Campaign finance watchdogs say the payment could violate election-disclosure laws, which require reporting of contributions and spending to help a candidate.
In addition, if Cohen was never reimbursed, the $130,000 payment should have appeared on Trump’s financial disclosure statement as an unpaid personal debt, according to CREW.
CREW has filed complaints with Department of Justice and the Office of Government Ethics asking the agencies to investigate whether Trump “willfully failed to report this potential liability.”
Will anyone investigate?

That’s not clear.
The Federal Election Commission, down to just four commissioners from its normal six-person strength, typically deadlocks along party lines when it considers potential campaign finance violations.
Commissioners must vote to authorize a full investigation.
The Daniels' case is one of two pending from Common Cause regarding payments to women who claimed trysts with Trump.
The other FEC complaint questions whether a reported $150,000 payment in August 2016 from the parent company of The National Enquirer to former playboy model Karen McDougal was intended to "buy and bury" the story of her alleged affair with Trump.
An FEC official declined to comment on the complaints, citing a provision of federal law that bars the agency from discussing pending cases.


Election law experts say recent history also could make the Department of Justice wary of the case.

In 2012, Justice Department prosecutors failed to convict former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards on campaign-finance violations after his supporters made $1 million in secret payments to conceal a pregnant mistress.
Edwards' lawyers argued the payments were aimed at shielding his wife, Elizabeth, who died of cancer in 2010, not hiding the information from voters.


"Proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt is a really tough thing to do," said Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California-Irvine. "I think the only way a case could go forward on that basis is if there's some kind of documentary evidence — such as a text or an email — which indicates that (the election) was the reason for the payment."


"If Cohen said, for example, 'This getting out would kill the campaign,' that would be strong evidence of motive," Hasen said. "But in the absence of that, it's tough."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...law/417111002/