On Wednesday, Walter Shaub, Jr., a longtime government lawyer and the director of the Office of Government Ethics, contacted Norman Eisen, an old colleague and the first ethics czar in the Obama White House. Shaub had just finished watching Donald Trump’s press conference, and he told Eisen, now at the Brookings Institution, that he was ready to go public.
Eisen and Shaub, whom President Obama appointed to a five-year term, in 2013, are part of a small confederation of current and former government-ethics lawyers who usually work quietly to help new federal officials untangle themselves from financial conflicts of interest. The O.G.E. oversees a sprawling network of forty-five hundred ethics employees spread across the government. Private citizens, especially wealthy ones, who go to work for the government are often surprised by the stringency of its ethics rules. The O.G.E. spends months preparing for Presidential transitions, when much of the federal government turns over and it’s crucial to vet nominees quickly.
A good deal of the job for Shaub and his top aides involves painful conversations with incoming employees about assets they need to shed or future income they need to forfeit in order to work for the government. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve delivered the bad news that they needed to divest assets, break open trusts, and dissolve businesses,” Shaub told reporters in remarks at the Brookings Institution, hosted by Eisen, on Wednesday afternoon. “Most of these individuals have worked with us in good faith. Their basic patriotism usually prevails, as they agree to set aside their personal interests to serve their country’s interests. Sometimes these individuals have required more persuasion, but every O.G.E. director has been buoyed by the unwavering example of Presidents who resolved their own conflicts of interest.”
Shaub said that he was “especially proud” of the ethics agreement that his office developed for Rex Tillerson, the former C.E.O. of ExxonMobil and Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of State. Tillerson agreed to give up millions of dollars worth of bonus payments in order to serve in the new Administration.
The ethics regime ensnares the personal lives of loved ones as well. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, who agreed to divest himself of forty-three different entities, also agreed to disclose the finances of his fiancée, Louise Linton, the Scottish actress.
The ethics agreements are often excruciatingly detailed. Elaine Chao, Trump’s nominee to be Transportation Secretary, is a former director of Northwest Airlines, which merged, in 2008, with Delta. Chao disclosed that she receives a discount on travel with Delta and promised to forgo the benefit for the remainder of her time in government.
The laws include sensible carve-outs where there is no obvious conflict. Ben Carson will continue to receive royalties from several books he’s written. James Mattis, Trump’s choice for Defense Secretary, was even allowed to keep four hundred thousand shares of stock in Theranos, the controversial Silicon Valley blood-test manufacturer that, in a string of lawsuits, has been accused of securities fraud and endangering the health of its customers.
For the most part, Shaub is proud of the work his office has done to vet what could be the wealthiest Cabinet in American history. But there is one incoming official who has refused to discuss ethics with him: Donald Trump.
The day after the election, Shaub e-mailed several Trump officials based in Washington. “Congratulations on the campaign’s victory,” he wrote, according to e-mails released by the O.G.E. “We’re really looking forward to getting down to work on this Presidential transition—which we’re going to make the best one in history!” He reminded Trump officials that they could call him or other members of his office at any hour—“around the clock”—even on Christmas.
The good cheer didn’t last. A couple of weeks later, during a time of turmoil in the Trump transition, when people associated with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were purged from the Washington team, Shaub wrote a despondent e-mail to one transition official. “I’m just dropping another quick note to remind you that OGE is here to help,” he said on November 19th. “We seem to have lost contact with the Trump-Pence transition since the election.”
Inside the O.G.E., aides had little idea what Trump would do. They circulated dozens of news clips about Trump’s sprawling business interests and the conflicts they raised, including a Forbes report that showed, as one aide noted in an e-mail, “Trump owns stock in the company building the Dakota Access pipeline, something that protesters say could sway any decision the new president would have to make next year over its fate,” and a Guardian article with the headline, “ ‘A Recipe for Scandal’: Trump Conflicts of Interest Point to Constitutional Crisis.”
Shaub resorted to watching Twitter and reading Politico and other publications to figure out Trump’s plan. Early in the morning on November 30th, Shaub saw that Trump had released a series of tweets about separating himself from his businesses. The details were murky, but Shaub was desperate to influence Trump’s decision about how to restructure his assets, so he decided to tweet back at him via the O.G.E.’s official account. “OGE applauds the ‘total’ divestiture decision. Bravo!” he wrote in one of a string of tweets.
“He was desperate,” Eisen said. “So he trolled Trump on Twitter. He did it tongue-in-cheek. Everyone knew Trump hadn’t made a decision to divest, so Walter was being sarcastic. Why is it that technocrats are not allowed to have a sense of humor? Maybe it was ill-advised. Nobody got the joke.”
“I was trying to use the vernacular of the President-elect’s favorite social-media platform to encourage him to divest,” Shaub told reporters this week.
When Trump and his tax lawyer—not an ethics lawyer—finally announced his plan, at a press conference in Trump Tower on Wednesday, Shaub was appalled. As many, including my colleague Sheelah Kolhatkar, have carefully documented, the Trump plan is a sham. Trump did not divest his assets the way his nominees have; he did not give up ownership of his companies, or appoint anyone with independence to oversee ethical questions. He has not taken serious steps to address concerns about violating the Emoluments Clause, and he and his team offered no details about public reporting of the minimal effort he has promised to make to address conflicts.
At the Brookings Institution that afternoon, Shaub pleaded with Trump to change his mind. “It’s important to understand that the President is now entering the world of public service,” he said. “He’s going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. He’s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. So, no, I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the President of the United States of America.”
Trump’s impulse is to cavalierly disregard ethical and democratic norms that he views as inconvenient. Going forward, government officials like Shaub, who risked a great deal by standing up to his incoming boss, will be more necessary than ever.
They will also have to be ready to pay a price. The day after Shaub’s press conference, he received a letter from Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah and the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He was not writing to praise Shaub for pressing Trump to abide by the same standards as his nominees. Instead, Chaffetz issued a veiled threat to cut off funding for Shaub’s agency.
