You seriously can’t make this up! Trump is going to need to go into DC with a dogged determination to remove Obama’s loyal allies in government positions who have no problem using Chicago style politics to help keep Obama’s radical agenda alive…
IT’S TIME TO DRAIN OBAMA’S SWAMP!
House Republicans have found a subject for their opening review of conflicts of interest under Donald Trump: the federal official in charge of investigating conflicts of interest.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the head of the House Oversight Committee, criticized the director of the federal Office of Government Ethics on Thursday over his criticism of Donald Trump’s plan to address conflicts of interest. And he threatened to subpoena the official, Walter Shaub, if he refuses to participate in an official interview.
“He seems to be acting prematurely at best, without doing investigations or thorough looks,” Chaffetz said in an interview. “He’s rendering opinions publicly that really cause you to scratch your head. We need the Office of Government Ethics to act ethically. Ironically, that’s not what they’re doing.”
Shaub, an appointee of President Barack Obama, has been a frequent critics of the incoming administration’s ethics plans, peaking Wednesday when he called Trump’s newly unveiled conflicts of interest policy “meaningless.”
The public rebuke of Trump’s business arrangements came during a press conference at the Brookings Institution that included the outspoken former White House ethics lawyers for Obama and former President George W. Bush. In his remarks, Shaub said the president-elect “stepping back from running his positions is meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective.”
“The plan does not comport with the tradition of our presidents over the last 40 years,” he added.
Chaffetz said Shaub has refused since the election to agree to a meeting to discuss matters related to OGE’s public remarks about Trump, as well as the Republican-led panel’s plans to pass language reauthorizing the office. If Shaub continues to resist, Chaffetz said he’d issue a subpoena “if we have to.”
“He is coming in. This is not going to be an optional exercise,” Chaffetz said, adding that he expected a meeting within a few weeks.
Shaub’s 5-year term expires in January 2018.
“We need a fair person behind the plate that’s going to call balls and strikes,” Chaffetz said. “What they’re supposed to do is help work with somebody to comply with the ethics requirements. But when you talk publicly about private conversations, that’s not ethical. And when you refuse to come in and talk to the committee when you’re doing reauthorization, when you start tweeting and issuing press statements on things you never looked at, that shouldn’t be the case at all.”
This isn’t Chaffetz’s first time challenging Shaub. In late 2015, the Republican accused the Obama appointee of giving Hillary Clinton a pass on conflict-of-interest laws over speaking fees she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were supposed to disclose. But Chaffetz said he’s grown more frustrated with Shaub since the November election and also singled out the OGE’s use of its official Twitter account to issue a bizarre series of posts — in Trump’s own staccato style — congratulating the president-elect for making major changes to his business arrangements.
For entire story: POLITICO
