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corruption
A Modest Proposal From Two Longtime Defenders of the Common Good: Let Us Join DOGE
"We can offer views that are untainted by the appearance of corruption or self-dealing."
Jan 13, 2025
Public Citizen co-presidents Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman on Monday requested to serve on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency "as voices for the interests of consumers and the public who are the beneficiaries of federal regulatory and spending programs."
Shortly after Trump's November victory, the Republican announced that he asked billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead DOGE, a presidential advisory commission that he said would work "to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
Since then, numerous watchdog groups, Democratic lawmakers, and others have sounded the alarm about DOGE and its leaders, blasting the commission as a thinly veiled attack on federal programs—including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—connected to the GOP trifecta's effort to pass more tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations.
"Public Citizen has concerns about DOGE's structure and mission," the group's co-presidents wrote to Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, co-chairs of Trump's transition team. "In structure, an advisory committee led by individuals such as Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy who hold financial interests that will be directly affected by federal budgetary policies presents substantial conflict of interest concerns that threaten to undermine public confidence in the committee's recommendations to the administration."
"Mr. Trump and OMB should take steps to ensure that DOGE's advice and recommendations take into consideration the viewpoints of the consumers and citizens who would be directly affected."
Musk, the world's richest person, has leadership roles at companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X. He has often been at Trump's side in the lead-up to next week's inauguration. Ramaswamy, who ran for president in the latest cycle before ultimately backing Trump, has founded a pharmaceutical company and an investment firm.
Gilbert and Weissman wrote that DOGE's mission to advise the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "on how to 'slash excess regulation' and 'cut wasteful expenditures' puts at risk important consumer safeguards and public protections, because it focuses only on eliminating rules and spending without considering the other half of the picture: more efficiently regulating corporations to better protect consumers and the public from harmful corporate practices, and making sound and efficient public investments."
"In light of the significant influence that DOGE is expected to have on the administration's fiscal and regulatory policy," they argued, "Mr. Trump and OMB should take steps to ensure that DOGE's advice and recommendations take into consideration the viewpoints of the consumers and citizens who would be directly affected by the regulatory and spending proposals that DOGE will advance, not only the viewpoint of wealthy businesspeople."
The pair made the case that their appointment to the commission "would not raise conflict of interest concerns."
Before Gilbert joined Public Citizen, she was an advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and worked as a campaign director to pass legislation on social justice and environmental issues for various organizations. Weissman previously directed the corporate accountability group Essential Action, edited the magazine Multinational Monitor, and worked as a public interest attorney at the Center for Study of Responsive Law.
"Unlike Musk, neither Rob nor I, nor Public Citizen, has a financial interest in federal government contracts and spending. In bringing the consumer and public perspective to DOGE, we can offer views that are untainted by the appearance of corruption or self-dealing," Gilbert said in a statement.
Weissman emphasized that "all signs suggest the nonrepresentative DOGE co-chairs aim to use 'efficiency' as a cover to drive a pro-corporate, anti-regulatory agenda, and an ideologically driven social service cuts program. This would constitute an anti-efficiency agenda."
"On the other hand, Lisa and I are prepared to offer a range of evidence-based efficiency proposals—to slash drug prices, end privatized Medicare, reduce the wasteful Pentagon budget—that would save American taxpayers and consumers hundreds of billions of dollars every year," he explained. "We also have recommendations for smart, efficient public investments—in human development and to address climate change—that will have a positive monetary return for the government and society."
As the letter highlights, Public Citizen—which "has worked to hold the government and corporations accountable to the people, including by focusing on research and advocacy with respect to regulation of health, safety, consumer finance, and the environment" since its founding in 1971—has already offered DOGE some recommendations.
"Consistent with Public Citizen's mission—and that of DOGE—Public Citizen on December 20, 2024, sent Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy a letter proposing two measures that would save the government and taxpayers billions of dollars, while improving health and access to medicines: authorizing generic competition to anti-obesity medications and implementing the Medicare drug price negotiation and inflation rebate programs to lower drug prices," Gilbert and Weissman wrote.
They also noted that appointing them to DOGE "would be an important step towards compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires 'the membership of the advisory committee to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.'"
In addition to outlining concerns about Musk and Ramaswamy, they detailed that "DOGE member Katie Miller's background is in handling press relations for government officials. William McGinley worked as a lawyer for various Republican Party groups and big law firms. Other people reported in the media as connected with DOGE also appear to have corporate backgrounds. These individuals lack the consumer and public interest perspective needed if Mr. Trump expects DOGE to have any hope of complying with FACA."
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Democratic Senator Rips Judicial Body's Decision Not to Refer Clarence Thomas to DOJ
"By all appearances, the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
Jan 03, 2025
Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse slammed the policy-setting body of the U.S. judiciary for declining his request to refer Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the Department of Justice over the right-wing judge's repeated failure to disclose luxury trips taken on the dime of billionaire benefactors.
Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the decision by the Judicial Conference "contains a number of inconsistencies and strange claims, and ultimately doesn't address the only real question the Judicial Conference should've been focused on for the nearly two years it's spent on this matter: Is there reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas willfully broke the disclosure law?"
"By all appearances," Whitehouse added, "the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations."
In a letter to Whitehouse on Thursday, Judicial Conference Secretary Robert Conrad wrote that Thomas "has filed amended financial disclosure statements" addressing his past failure to divulge trips and other gifts funded by billionaires, including GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. Thomas has insisted he did not know he was required to disclose such gifts, a claim that Whitehouse and other critics have met with deep skepticism.
Conrad also expressed doubt that the Judicial Conference has the power to refer Supreme Court justices to the Justice Department, even as he acknowledged the body's referral authority under 5 U.S.C. § 13106(b).
That statute says the Judicial Conference "shall refer to the attorney general the name of any individual which such official or committee has reasonable cause to believe has willfully failed to file a report or has willfully falsified or willfully failed to file information required to be reported."
"There is at least reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas intentionally disregarded the disclosure requirement."
In April 2023, Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) urged the Judicial Conference to "step in and refer Justice Thomas to the attorney general for investigation" after ProPublicarevealed that in addition to funding luxury trips, Crow purchased property from the judge.
Thomas did not disclose the transaction, a failure that Whitehouse and Johnson characterized as "part of an apparent pattern of noncompliance with disclosure requirements."
"There is at least reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas intentionally disregarded the disclosure requirement to report the sale of his interest in the Savannah properties in an attempt to hide the extent of his financial relationship with Crow," the Democratic lawmakers wrote in their 2023 letter to the Judicial Conference.
The body's decision Thursday came days after the Senate Judiciary Committee uncovered two additional private jet and yacht trips Thomas took in 2021 at Crow's expense.
"It's clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement last month after his panel released a report on the Supreme Court's "ethical crisis."
The report accuses the Judicial Conference of failing "to adequately respond to the Supreme Court's ethical challenges," noting that the body's September 2024 changes to disclosure requirements "are oddly specific in expanding the personal hospitality exemption and seem more likely to absolve past misconduct and facilitate the acceptance of future largesse than strengthen judicial ethics."
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'New Year's Eve Ethics Massacre': House Panel Quietly Drops Campaign Finance Probes
One analyst said the House Ethics Committee has "effectively legalized the conversion of campaign funds for personal use."
Jan 02, 2025
The bipartisan House Ethics Committee announced earlier this week that it unanimously opted to close several investigations involving alleged campaign finance violations by three Republicans and one Democrat, a move that one expert characterized as a "New Year's Eve Ethics Massacre."
The decision to close the investigations into Reps. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), and Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) was made public in a vaguely worded press release published the day before New Year's Eve.
The panel, composed of five Republicans and five Democrats, said while "there was evidence" that lawmakers who were under investigation "did not fully comply with the applicable standards relating to personal use of campaign funds," the committee determined there wasn't proof that "any member intentionally misused campaign funds for their personal benefit."
The committee also criticized Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules pertaining to personal use of campaign funds as "often ambiguous" and issued its own updated guidance for House members.
Additionally, the committee said it dropped "other confidential matters that have been under review," without offering specifics.
The committee said its only action in response to its findings was contacting the lawmakers to provide them with the updated campaign finance guidance "as well as specific findings and recommendations with respect to that member's campaign activity."
"The New Year's Eve Ethics Massacre is a repudiation of the Ethics Committee's job to hold members of Congress to account for their wrongdoing."
Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, argued that the panel's decision "effectively legalized the conversion of campaign funds for personal use by members of the House of Representatives" by establishing "a new weak standard" and ignoring evidence of wrongdoing provided by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).
"They can now take dollars from donors and put them in their pocket," Schuman wrote in his newsletter. "It's not what they said they did, but under the cover of the New Year's holiday, Ethics Committee Democrats and Republicans pulled a fast one, legalizing a money laundry so blatantly corrupt it would embarrass Walter White. They also made many other allegations of wrongdoing disappear."
Schuman noted that the committee's probes into Bishop, Mooney, Hunt, and Jackson stemmed from OCE reports on each of the lawmakers dating back to 2020. Republicans have repeatedly targeted the OCE and are currently trying to drop "ethics" from its name.
In the case of Mooney, Schuman wrote, the OCE found in October 2021 that he "used campaign funds to purchase more than $17,000 in gift cards in violation of FEC rules and had the effect of concealing the ultimate recipient of those funds (which may have been Rep. Mooney's pocket)."
The West Virginia Republican said in a statement that he was "grateful" for the House Ethics Committee's decision and dismissed allegations of misconduct as "driven by politically motivated actors on the extreme left."
As for Bishop—the lone Democrat among the four lawmakers who faced House Ethics Committee probes—the OCE found on February 10, 2020 that he "may have improperly disbursed campaign funds for personal use and improperly spent his official member funds for annual holiday parties in the district," Schuman noted.
"Among the inappropriate costs incurred were golf club memberships, the purchase of golf clubs, brunch for family members, groceries, and so on," Schuman added.
"The ethics process is broken," he concluded. "There must be an independent ethics process where investigations and their recommendations are divorced from internal party politics and not designed to shield members from accountability for apparent wrongdoing. The New Year's Eve Ethics Massacre is a repudiation of the Ethics Committee's job to hold members of Congress to account for their wrongdoing and to be honest and forthright to the public about their behavior."
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, echoed Schuman's assessment, arguing in a statement that by "summarily dismissing all charges of potential violations of ethics rules, the House Ethics Committee is shirking its responsibilities to both the House of Representatives and the American public."
"The press release from the Ethics Committee hinted that violations may have indeed occurred with personal use of campaign funds ('a gray area' and 'did not fully comply' with the rules, stated the release) and avoided any discussion of the other allegations, but dismissed the charges nonetheless," said Holman.
Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen's co-president, added that the decision "is further evidence that the House Ethics Committee, on its own, is too embedded with members of Congress to adequately enforce ethics rules."
"A fair and impartial congressional ethics process needs the public awareness and oversight provided by the outside Office of Congressional Ethics," Gilbert said.
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