Showing posts with label Trump transition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trump transition. Show all posts

November 9, 2024

Will Trump sign an ethics code before assuming office? By Hal M. Brown


If you have a subscription to The NY Times you can read this article by clicking here:



Read a summary here: "Trump's team hits first roadblock as they start to assume power" in RawStory.

This is from the Times:

In 2019, Congress amended that law to require candidates to create and publicly post an ethics plan before the election and to “include information on how eligible presidential candidates will address their own conflicts of interest during a presidential term.”

That bipartisan law was born in part out of concerns about ethical issues during the first Trump administration.

While Mr. Trump’s appointees were required to comply with ethical codes, Mr. Trump declared shortly before taking office that he would not divest his assets, nor would he place them in a blind trust.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, has since identified more than 3,400 conflicts of interest tied to Mr. Trump during his first administration, among them holding political events and hosting foreign dignitaries at hotels and resorts owned by his company.

How insane is this? Read on:

By refusing to sign that agreement, Mr. Trump effectively faces no limit on contributions and does not need to name his donors publicly. Money raised by the transition is not regulated by any other government agency.

A separate concern involves the other memorandum of understanding, with the White House. Among other things, it sets the conditions under which the current administration can share sensitive government information with the incoming president’s team.

Until the Trump transition signs that document, the Biden administration is legally barred from providing it with the security clearances needed to share classified intelligence and national defense briefings, Mr. Stier said. It also cannot give transition employees physical access to the 438 different federal agencies that they will soon control, and it cannot allow them to review their files.

But by law, that agreement cannot be signed until an ethics plan that conforms to federal statute is submitted to the White House and posted online, creating something of a game of chicken between the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump transition.

If neither side blinks, Mr. Trump’s team would be forced to assume control of the entire federal government cold. That, Mr. Stier said, could leave the country vulnerable at a critical moment.

“The consequences are severe,” Mr. Stier said. “It would not be possible to be ready to govern on Day 1.”

I think that, to put it mildly, this shows a surfeit of arrogance. I can see Trump, knowing he's about to become dictator with a Supreme Court and Congress cheering him on, saying something along the lines of "I don't need to sign no freaking ethics code" and other choice non-grammatical expletive laden lines like saying where Biden's transition team can shove their ethics code.

I don't think Trump believes he needs any transition process that involves members of the Biden administration.

My sense of him in his now supercharged highfalutin narcisstic feeling of having the ultimate unchecked power of a dictator, and his being, oh, let's say being a wee bit narcisstic, is that he thinks he can sashay into the White House without any preparation and start giving orders.

 Tragic as it is to recognize this he can do it.

As for the ethics code, it would go from this...


... to this:


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Above:  Protesters of Kentucky Senate Bill SB150, known as the Transgender Health Bill, cheer on speakers during a rally on the lawn of the ...