Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Congressman Elijah Cummings, and Sen. Tom Carper have released a report compiled by the Government Accountability Office showing that the Trump team started ignoring ethics rules during the transition period and kept on ignoring them right up until they took over the White House.
… resulting in ethical crises that extended beyond the transition period into the Trump presidency.
In fact, Trump is still ignoring ethics rules. Trump has ignored rules laid down by previous administrations, analysis of the GAO, and advice from the Office of Government Ethics. He’s failed to resolve clear conflicts of interest, provide adequate information, or provide information to nonpartisan auditors.
And why not? No one is doing anything about it.
Overall, the GAO findings show a lack of attention to ethics and that precedents from previous Administrations were frequently broken - with little recourse from Congress.
Trump has taken this position as blanket permission to do what he wants, take what he wants, and answer to no one. In theory, it shouldn’t work that way. In practice, the Republican Congress has done nothing to check Trump’s constant ethical violations and reign in the misuse of government resources.
"It is outrageous that President Trump's transition team and Vice President Pence's office in the White House refused to even speak to the nonpartisan auditors at GAO about they spent taxpayer funds during the transition," said Ranking Member Cummings. "Their refusal to cooperate with GAO fits the unfortunate pattern we have seen from this White House of secrecy and a lack of accountability."
Though the Trump team agreed to an ethical code of conduct, they’ve not only failed to enforce it, the person who is supposed to be in charge of policing this code is one of the many missing-in-action who Trump has never nominated.
OGE gave specific recommendations to the Trump transition team to hire a government ethics expert prior to the inauguration to help manage the nominations process.
Team Trump ignored those recommendations—which could be for the best. Considering nominations like Scott Pruitt at EPA and Jefferson Sessions at Justice, Trump’s choice of an ethics expert would likely have short-listed Bernie Madoff and Charlie Manson.