Fearing More 'Blatant Corruption' in Second Trump Term, Watchdog Issues Ethics Blueprint

A leading U.S. watchdog group on Thursday published what it called "a blueprint for strengthening the federal government's ethics programs across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches" amid Democrats' inadequate reforms and the prospect of more "outright scandals and blatant corruption" under a possible second administration of former Republican President Donald Trump.

The Revolving Door Project publication—titled Rebuilding Public Trust: Six Principles to Guide Reform—notes that "Americans' trust in government is near historic lows, a trend that both preceded and continued after the blatant corruption of the Trump administration."

"Democratic administrations, too, made limited progress in curtailing the more routine forms of corruption that combine with dramatic scandals to undercut public trust," the report continues, adding that President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order on ethics "was only a modest step up on what has been standard, failing to take the large strides necessary to close the revolving door between private and public sectors, mandate divestitures, or require compliance with stringent transparency measures."

"The next administration will be a crucial test of ethical management of the federal government."

"Congressional Democrats' reform proposals have also stopped short of addressing mundane corruption, even as many Democrats have been implicated in congressional trading scandals and leaders like Nancy Pelosi have expressed disdain for commonsense measures like banning congressional stock trading," the paper asserts, referring to the House speaker emeritus from California.

"The Supreme Court and federal judiciary have been swamped by ethics scandals, with investigative reporting exposing judges' and justices' failures to disclose lavish trips from wealthy backers and failures to recuse in cases involving their financial interests—yet some mainstream judicial ethics proposals stop short of even holding the judiciary to the same ethics standards as Congress," the report adds.

The publication enumerates "six principles that should guide ethics reform efforts":

• Practices that can be plausibly perceived as corrupt must be outlawed;
• Successful ethics program will consist of bright-line rules that are simple to administer and enforce;
• Ethics rules should be as comprehensive as possible in both who and what they cover;
• Ethics rules should distinguish between corporate lobbying that serves private interests, and lobbying by public interest groups;
• Ethics offices must have the legal authority, independence, and resources to find and investigate breaches and hold powerful actors accountable; and
• The ethics system, no matter how strong, must proactively invite public scrutiny, not cower from it.

"By slowing the turn of the revolving door and banning all political appointees, federal judges, Supreme Court justices, and members of Congress from owning individual stocks, the next administration and Congress could make huge strides in rebuilding Americans' trust that the government works in the public interest, not corporate interests," Revolving Door Project research director and report co-author Andrea Beaty said in a statement Thursday. "And our recommendations to promote transparency and strong enforcement would work to cement such advances."

Trump—whose first term was marred by thousands of conflicts of interest and many other alleged and proven improprieties—is already one of the most conflicted presidents in U.S. history, given his business connections with foreign governments and holdings in industries governed by federal regulators.

Earlier this month, Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee published a report detailing how, while in office, the former president used his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to enrich himself with hundreds of illegal or questionable payments from federal and state officials, job-seekers, and presidential pardon recipients.

"With Trump unabashedly previewing a return to blatant corruption and Americans in a period of near-historically low trust in government, the next administration will be a crucial test of ethical management of the federal government," Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser said in a statement.

"Unless the next administration prioritizes robust ethics reforms, trust in government institutions will erode further," he added. "And should the flagrant disregard of ethics rules return, the political opposition must use all tools at their disposal to advance ethics reforms and neutralize as much harm as possible."