WH Tries to Block Public Disclosure of Large Number of Lobbyists, Industry Lawyers Hired by Trump

May 24th, 2017

Awake Goy

WH Tries to Block Public Disclosure of Large Number of Lobbyists, Industry Lawyers Hired by Trump

Susanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Host of Hardline Radio Show

The Trump administration is hard at work trying to get the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to back off from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other agencies that do not want to comply with turning over ethics waivers given to lobbyists hired by this current administration.

In a letter addressed to Mick Mulvaney, director of the OMB, OGE director Walter Shaub wrote: “The unusual nature of your letter highlights OGE’s responsibility to lead the executive branch ethics program with independence, free from political pressure. Accordingly, OGE declines your request to suspend its ethics inquiry and reiterates its expectation that agencies will fully comply with its directive by June 1, 2017. Public confidence in the integrity of government decisionmaking [sic] demands no less.”

Mulvaney previously asked the OGE to suspend official disclosures of waivers and insinuated that the OGE lacks authority to demand those documents in the first place.

Shaub pushed back, noting that Congress has supported the OGE’s access to such waivers, citing a 2009 letter written by Senator Chuck Grassley wherein his agency was tasked with obtaining such waivers and making them publicly available on the internet.

Shaub continued: “OGE is exercising its authority and independence appropriately. OGE’s April 28, 2017, directive is supported by ample legal authority and compliant with applicable procedures. I want to assure you that a request from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget is not something that I decline lightly.”

This exchange stemmed from the Trump administration’s incessant push for the OGE to back off from exposing the “dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration.”

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Trump has hired numerous industry attorneys and former lobbyists. Attempts to keep this fact a secret drives Mulvaney and his quest to get the OGE to turn a blind eye.

Senator Patty Murray wrote a letter to the OGE earlier this week, voicing concerns that “President Trump may be profiting from the retirement plans of millions of our nation’s public servants,” in violation of the Constitution’s prohibition on “domestic emoluments.”

Murray asked the OGE to investigate recent news reports focused on Trump’s hotel ventures – specifically where public funds are being paid toward private gain such as the Trump SoHo Hotel and Condominium complex located in New York.

According to the media investigations, the Los Angeles based corporation CIM Group owns Trump SoHo which was purchased using “state and city run pensions funds.” Over the course of the last 7 years, an estimated millions of dollars have gone through the fund and ended up being paid out to Trump International Hotels Management LLC (TIHM).

That corporation manages and operates Trump’s business trust.

Murray is concerned because it “appears that public pension funds from several cities and states are paying millions of dollars to an investment fund, which in turn pays millions of dollars to Trump International Hotels Management LLC, from which President Trump profits. This looks like exactly the type of monetary flow prohibited by the Constitution.”