Thanks to the Office of Government Ethics, lobbyists now have the opportunity to donate to Trump staffers’ legal defense.
“It’s very depressing. It’s unseemly for the ethics office to be doing something sneaky like that,”said former OGE director Walter Shaub.
“Without any notice or comment, the Office of Government Ethics has reversed its former policy barring anonymous donations from lobbyists to White House staffers who have legal defense funds. So as the Russian probe expands, Trump’s aides can now raise private funds to pay their attorneys.
“Bad idea. Aides will know who’s donating even if they’re supposed to be anonymous. And donors will have certain policies they want White House aides to push for. It’s the art of the deal.
A part of Politico’s story reads, “ ‘You can picture a whole army of people with business before the government willing to step in here and make [the debt] go away,’ said Marilyn Glynn, a former George W. Bush-era acting OGE director who worked in the office for 17 years.
“Lawyer fees have long been the source of controversy for presidents under fire. Richard Nixon’s White House took covert steps to pay the Watergate burglars, and a trust set up during Bill Clinton’s first term to deal with Whitewater and other controversies had to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from a controversial Arkansas friend who was later indicted for campaign finance abuses.
“At issue for the Trump staffers is a 1993 OGE guidance document that gave a green light to organizers of legal defense funds for government employees to solicit anonymous donations from otherwise prohibited sources -- like lobbyists or others with business before the government. That Clinton-era opinion reasoned that if such donors were anonymous, such donations could be legal because the employee ‘does not know who the paymasters are.’
“But former OGE officials say the ethics office quickly determined that guidance had flaws, and instead advised attorneys to stay away from all lobbyist donations, anonymous or not, as they arranged funds benefiting the Clintons and a cadre of senior White House aides.
“ ‘It wasn’t in the interest of the public to have people guessing who really is donating here,’ Glynn said. ‘We preferred more sunshine in the process.’ ”
By Darren Samuelsohn
