The American public does not have a complete picture of senior Trump administration officials’ personal finances — and there’s no telling when they will.
Months after posting disclosures on the White House website, the Trump administration does not appear to have sent the financial information for some top White House officials to the Office of Government Ethics for a second and often more serious review. OGE said the office publicly posts disclosures from all officials 30 days after receiving them.
There are currently no disclosures for top officials like border czar Tom Homan and House of Representatives liaison Jeffrey Freeland available on OGE’s disclosure database.
NOTUS has identified at least five top officials whose disclosures are still missing from OGE’s database by comparing ethics laws with the salaries and positions of White House staffers.
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There is no public list of senior White House officials required to face OGE review of their finances. But most White House senior staff who have salaries above $150,000 are likely required to have their disclosures assessed for accuracy and completeness by OGE, according to rules under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
Homan is a senior official with a salary well over that cap, making about $195,000 in 2025. His disclosure on the White House website has not been updated since May 2025, even though the OGE requires the White House ethics office to “promptly” forward completed financial disclosures for review.
OGE reviews regularly compel top officials to disclose financial ties that the White House previously has not. Without them, the American public is left to rely on the White House to publish and update staff financial disclosures, from stock sales to business entanglements — and that has not been happening consistently.
In early January, the White House transmitted the financial information for nine senior members of the administration to OGE, including for Trump’s deputy chief of staff, James Blair, and speechwriter Ross Worthington. Those submissions happened more than six months after the White House appeared to finish its own reviews.
The White House did post financial disclosures for senior officials, including Homan, in June. But a comparison of the disclosures on the White House’s website and those finalized by the OGE showed that the White House’s records are sometimes incomplete.
Take the case of Vince Haley, the director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council.
Haley’s original disclosure, published by the White House in June, did not list that Haley’s previous business clients included a limited liability company owned by Kash Patel, director of the FBI, and an LLC owned by former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, who faced extensive criticism for his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
That same disclosure also omitted Haley’s $245,675 salary for his work on the 2024 Trump campaign.
This information only became publicly available at the end of January when the OGE published an updated version of Haley’s financial information.
In a statement, the White House acknowledged that Trump officials’ initial disclosures may have been incomplete.
“Reports that have not yet been certified are usually because the filer is still gathering information or including things that were initially left off,” a White House official told NOTUS. “That process sometimes takes several weeks or months depending on how complicated the reports are. Vince, like all White House employees, was counseled on the need to comply with impartiality regulations regarding former clients.”
The White House told NOTUS that it updates its website with staffers’ financial information on an “intermittent” basis.
“We are only required to make reports available, upon written request, 30 days after they are submitted. However, as we did during the President’s first term, the Administration proactively posts them publicly on the WH website,” a White House official said. “While we try to do it when reports are 30-days post-submission, sometimes there are delays.”
“Nothing is being withheld,” the official said.
NOTUS found several missing documents.
Three of the nine disclosures shared with OGE in January of this year — for Jarrod Agen, the executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council, Stanley Woodward, who served as senior counselor to Trump until November, and Trent Morse, who served as deputy director of Trump’s personnel office until September — were not available on the White House’s website as of early February.
After NOTUS asked the White House about those missing disclosure forms, the disclosures for Agen and Morse were added to the website in mid-February.
Some documents that show senior staff buying or selling stocks are also only available through OGE’s database and not on the White House’s site.
Matthew McMullan, who serves as the Senate liaison for the White House, sold stock in nuclear reactor company Oklo in October 2025. He made a significant profit off the stock sale because Oklo’s share price skyrocketed nearly 400% in the months leading up to the sale, heavily influenced by Trump administration approvals and policy changes.
The disclosure of McMullan’s stock sale in October was not posted on the White House website until February, after NOTUS inquired about his transaction. The information about his sale only became available to the public on Jan. 30, when the OGE published a disclosure of the transaction.
“All White House employees are counseled to recuse themselves from participating in any official matters that may impact their financial holdings,” the White House official said. “Matthew has complied with all ethics guidance.”
There is a gap of several months between the sale and public disclosure for 14 trades made by White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
The White House did not publish the financial transactions made by Scharf between June and November 2025 until mid-February, after NOTUS inquired about the sales. The information only became available to the public in late January, when OGE published a notice of the transactions.
Scharf in June purchased stock in GE Vernova, Duke Energy, and Caterpillar — three companies that have outperformed the market in the past six months in part because of Trump administration actions favorable to their businesses.
“All individual equity positions that Will has owned since the start of this Administration are managed by independent investment advisors without any input or foreknowledge of trades on Will’s part,” said a White House official. “Will has complied with all WH ethics guidance — he was not required to divest from individual equity holdings because of the nature of his role.”
OGE, created in 1978 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, has little power to enforce ethics policies and no mechanism at its disposal — save for public admonishment — for punishing ethics scofflaws.
An OGE official confirmed that there are no strict deadlines for when the White House must get disclosures certified for newly appointed senior Trump officials.
OGE declined to comment on the specifics of any individual filer.
The OGE could eventually decline to certify some of the nine White House disclosures it received in early January. It could also decline to certify disclosures that are missing entirely, such as those for Homan and Freeland.
Should ethics officials decline to certify any of the staff disclosures, that information would be shared with the public, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Later this year, senior Trump administration officials — including Trump himself — will be required to file another financial disclosure covering their personal financial activity from last year.
For these annual disclosures, OGE has instituted more stringent requirements where it may “decline to certify” reports that aren’t finalized by mid-January.
“The agency is responsible for transmitting the report and such other information as OGE may request sufficiently in advance to provide OGE enough time to review and certify the report by that date,” the Office of Government Ethics wrote in an April 2025 memorandum to the White House. “OGE may also decline to certify any 2025 annual report for other reasons, including the filer’s unresolved potentially conflicting holding or position, non-compliance with applicable ethics rules, or continued non-compliance with an ethics agreement.”
The OGE’s policy of instituting a deadline was meant to combat an administration slow-walking the review of personal financial disclosures, according to two former OGE officials who served prior to Trump’s second term and spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity because of concerns over retribution.
Two former OGE officials described this as a clever solution to an ongoing problem across presidential administrations, where incomplete personal financial disclosures designed to defend against conflicts of interest could languish for months — or more.
A “decline to certify” designation by the Office of Government Ethics would, if nothing else, serve as a sort of ethical scarlet letter.
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