Here's a limited round- up of your Trump swamp critter news for today.
Treasury Secretary Steve "Moochin'" Mnuchin:
The Office of Government Ethics refused to certify Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s 2018 financial disclosure statement over a sleight-of-hand arrangement involving his stake in a film production company. In 2017, he transferred his holdings in Stormchaser Partners to its founder, Louise Linton, then gained them back when they married a month later.
Now Mnuchin is revising his federal ethics pledge to recuse himself from any decisions that could benefit the company, which the ethics office says puts him back “in compliance.” However, he has continued to work on a trade deal with China that includes expanded access for the movie industry, The New York Times reported Thursday. [snip]
Walter Shaub, a former federal ethics chief under Barack Obama and Trump, blasted the accommodation for Mnuchin. A spouse’s business holdings have always been considered as posing potential conflicts of interest for a federal official, he emphasized. In addition, he warned that the Trump administration views the conflict-of-interest law as “inapplicable to a broad multi-sector trade agreement,” such as the one Mnuchin is helping negotiate with China. That means the administration would find it acceptable if the treasury secretary negotiates a “clause in such an agreement that increases the value of the asset he sold Linton,” Shaub wrote. (our emphasis)Medicare/ Medicaid/Obamacare administrator Seema "She Seema Nice" Verma:
The Trump appointee who oversees Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare quietly directed millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts to Republican communications consultants during her tenure atop the agency — including hiring one well-connected GOP media adviser to bolster her public profile.
The communications subcontracts approved by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma — routed through a larger federal contract and described to POLITICO by three individuals with firsthand knowledge of the agreements — represent a sharp break from precedent at the agency. Those deals, managed by Verma’s deputies, came in some cases over the objections of CMS staffers, who raised concerns about her push to use federal funds on GOP consultants and to amplify coverage of Verma’s own work. CMS has its own large communications shop, including about two dozen people who handle the press.
Verma, a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence, has become a lightning rod for pushing work requirements in Medicaid and spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally unwind pieces of Obamacare. She previously worked as a consultant to conservative states seeking to reshape health care programs for the poor. (our emphasis)IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig and IRS Chief Counsel Michael Desmond:
President Trump personally lobbied Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to prioritize the confirmation of his nominated Internal Revenue Service chief counsel on Feb. 5, about the time House Democrats started talking seriously about telling the IRS to turn over Trump's tax returns, The New York Times reports. On Feb. 27, the Senate confirmed the nominee, California tax lawyer Michael Desmond, and now Desmond will be advising the IRS on how to respond to House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal's (D-Mass.) request for six years of Trump's personal and business tax returns.
As a private tax lawyer, Desmond had briefly advised the Trump Organization on what a spokesman called a "discrete" IRS reporting matter before Trump took office, Bloomberg reported last July, and he worked alongside two current tax counsels to the Trump Organization, Sheri Dillon and William Nelson.
Trump's IRS commissioner, Charles Rettig, meanwhile, owns 50 percent shares of two one-bedroom residential rental units in the Waikiki Trump International Hotel and Tower in Hawaii, each worth $1.1 million, The Wall Street Journal reported last June, before Rettig's confirmation hearing. And as ProPublica and WNYC noted in October, Rettig — then a California tax attorney — argued in Forbes in February 2016 that Trump shouldn't release his tax returns, four days after Trump unveiled his dubious "I'm under audit" excuse for keeping his returns secret. (our emphasis)But all is not quite lost. There are good people in Federal agencies -- career civil servants -- who're not letting the corruption and malfeasance pass:
Tricia Newbold set an important mark when she became the first official currently serving in Donald Trump’s White House to take accusations of wrongdoing to Congress—and to put her name publicly behind them.
A welcome consequence of the 2018 midterm elections is that there's finally oversight in Congress, and Democrats will be aggressive in exercising it. It couldn't have come too soon.But Democrats on Capitol Hill say that beyond Newbold, a small army of whistle-blowers from across the government has been working in secret with the House Oversight Committee to report alleged malfeasance inside the Trump administration. Lawmakers and aides are reluctant to discuss information they have gleaned from anonymous government tipsters in detail. But the list of whistle-blowers who either currently or previously worked in the Trump administration, or who worked closely with the administration, numbers in the “dozens,” according to a senior aide from the committee now led by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland. (our emphasis)
