The federal government’s ethics czar has never not been a lawyer. One in four employees in the Office of Government Ethics is a lawyer.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Michael Chamberlain, does not hold a law degree. He is, however, a loyal Trump ally.
“It’s like asking the gardner to be your cardiologist,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a good government nonprofit.
Chamberlain’s background has raised concerns among former OGE employees and good government groups who are questioning whether Trump’s nominee has the skill set and the independence to direct what has historically been a nonpartisan and legally-minded office.
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Chamberlain, who Trump nominated last week, is a former campaign operative who now leads the right-wing advocacy group Protect the Public’s Trust. He previously served as an Education Department official in Trump’s first term, after working on Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.
His familiarity with the ethics office starts and ends with his time at Protect the Public’s Trust, when he spearheaded ethics complaints and lawsuits against Biden administration officials. Few of the group’s hundreds of actions during the former president’s term led to any substantive findings.
“Mr. Chamberlain should explain whether his ardor for government ethics carried beyond just the Biden administration into the Trump administration and account for any difference in his activities during the two administrations,” said Walt Shaub, who served as OGE director under former President Barack Obama and briefly under Trump, adding that his own work has consistently angered administrations of both parties.
OGE signs off on financial disclosure forms for political appointees in agencies and the White House and helps to resolve their conflicts of interest. The OGE director has typically had a legal background as he helps agencies and appointees navigate potential conflicts and financial entanglements, and makes determinations of when violations of ethics law occur.
Don Fox, who served as OGE’s general counsel for five years and as its acting director for two starting in 2011, noted that past leaders of OGE, an agency created in the wake of the Watergate scandal, have always demonstrated a “willingness to call balls and strikes” regardless of who was in power. Emory Rounds, a Trump appointee, consistently clashed with the first Trump administration after it began refusing to comply with the office’s requests and agencies began unilaterally changing their ethics rules.
“You have to be able to push back on agency leaders … and have a disagreement with the White House when that needs to happen,” Fox said.
That, he argued, is even more important than having a law degree.
“You don’t have to have a career in government ethics or be a lawyer, but it strikes me he has no relevant experience,” Fox said. “I have serious misgivings about the person they’ve chosen and the mission they’ve asked him to do.”
The Trump administration has raised a slew of ethics concerns since taking office, including the entanglements of the president’s and his family’s businesses and potential conflicts throughout his Cabinet and top aides.
“OGE needs an independent voice to ensure that the public is protected, and officials, even the president, are not placing personal or corporate interest before the public’s interest,” said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight. “By naming someone with a political history, OGE’s ability to expose and remedy ethics violations will be limited and its essential mission tainted.”
The OGE director has final sign-off before any nominee’s financial disclosure form is transmitted to the Senate for review. Fox cautioned that someone assuming a politically charged approach in the job could take “shortcuts” when passing those along. Stier, from the Partnership for Public Service, said that could lead to individuals receiving OGE approval despite having portfolios with a “clear conflict with their job responsibilities.”
Trump fired David Huitema, the OGE director the Senate confirmed near the end of former Biden’s tenure, weeks after taking office despite Huitema having just started a set five-year term. The agency has since been led by a rotating cast of appointees who hold other roles in Trump’s government.
“People taking on OGE as a second job means the office has been lenient in an incompetent way,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project. “[Chamberlain] will professionalize the leniency.”
Fox, the former acting director and long-time government attorney, also expressed concern that Chamberlain would be asked to gut OGE – the agency has just 58 employees, down 22% since Trump took office.
OGE also plays a key role during presidential transitions, both in the lead-up to the election and immediately afterward to help the president-elect move nominees through the vetting process. If a Democrat is elected, Fox said, that person may refuse to work with OGE if it proves to be run on a partisan basis – or OGE could drag its feet in working with the incoming president, bogging down the transition process that Congress has enacted several laws over the last 15 years to institutionalize.
“How would a Democratic nominee feel comfortable working with someone who is a Trump personal loyalist?” Fox said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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