WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s refusal to divest from his global business empire has provoked a showdown in Washington over government ethics, pitting a small federal agency tasked with preventing conflicts of interest against the incoming administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill.
The dispute erupted Friday after a top House Republican demanded to question the director of the independent Office of Government Ethics, who took the unusual step this week of denouncing Trump for retaining ownership of his businesses while transferring management to his sons.
With Republicans and Democrats weighing in, the episode has brought unprecedented attention to a usually obscure office and its director, Walter Shaub Jr., who became an instant sensation on Twitter and in news headlines this week. He blasted Trump’s plan as “meaningless” and said the president-elect is not meeting the standards set by “the best of his nominees.”
House Republicans reacted swiftly, summoning Shaub to appear before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to answer questions about his office and his public criticism of Trump. Shaub made the remarks at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday, hours after the president-elect and his attorneys had laid out the business plan at a news conference.
By late Thursday, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, had sent Shaub a letter summoning him to appear before lawmakers in a closed-door, transcribed interview much like a deposition.
But ethics experts and Democrats on Capitol Hill said the letter, by noting the ethics office is up for reauthorization by Congress, was a veiled threat to slash its budget unless Shaub changes his rhetoric.
“I want to talk about the whole department,” Chaffetz said. “Mr. Shaub has taken a very aggressive stance on issues he’s never looked at. He’s raised a bunch of eyebrows.”
He called Shaub, appointed by President Obama to a five-year term that ends in a year, “a bit of a hothead.”
The lawmaker said he has not yet decided whether to ask Shaub to testify at a public committee hearing; he said he first wants to hear what Shaub says during the upcoming closed-door hearing, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., came to Shaub’s defense, accusing Chaffetz of an “attempt to intimidate” Shaub and his agency.
“Mr. Chaffetz’s attempt to intimidate the office is deplorable and would be a distraction that would make it harder for OGE to do its already difficult job,” Schumer said in a statement. “It is totally out of line when Americans want clean and accountable government. Mr. Chaffetz should instead focus on his job and let Mr. Shaub and OGE focus on theirs.”
Shaub’s supporters are calling him a hero, pushed by Trump’s tangle of potential conflicts to uphold his duty as a public official and call out a plan he believes is unethical, if legal.
“He’s put ethics front and center on the policy agenda,” said Norm Eisen, who served as ethics counselor to Obama. “No one has taken a more courageous action, especially given that he’s going to be working for Trump in eight days.”
The nonpartisan ethics office, with just 75 employees and a $16 million budget, has always been seen and not heard as its lawyers advise incoming presidents, their Cabinet nominees and other officials on how to avoid conflicts of interest.
In the swirl of controversy over potential conflicts related to Trump’s real estate and branding business, Shaub is presenting himself as an unlikely counterweight to the power of the incoming president. His first foray into resistance came on Twitter a few weeks after the election.
Shaub, 57, is a career ethics lawyer whose outspokenness during the presidential transition has caught colleagues by surprise. He is neither flashy nor attention-seeking, they say, but cautious by nature and concerned with protecting the confidentiality of the public officials he works with.
Shaub is known to crack corny jokes. His expertise in federal ethics conflicts is unchallenged, say those who have worked with him. He is described as a workaholic who started his legal career in government at the department of Veterans Affairs.
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