美国国家公共电台 NPR Ethics Office Director Walter Shaub Resigns, Saying Rules Need To Be Tougher

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The head of the federal agency that guides presidents and top officials on ethics¹ rules is resigning. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub Jr. began dueling² with Donald Trump³ even before Trump became president. They haven't been able to agree on how or even whether the Trump administration must comply with federal ethics laws. NPR's Peter Overby reports.

PETER OVERBY, BYLINE⁴: Walter Shaub announced his resignation on Twitter. He posted an image of his letter to President Trump. It says public employees have to, quote, "place loyalty⁵ to the Constitution, the laws and ethical⁶ principles above private gain." White House Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the White House, quote, "accepts Mr. Shaub's resignation and appreciates his service." It's a long way from last December when Shaub tried to persuade the incoming president to divest⁸ his hundreds of companies. He tried using a tweet storm, then a speech at a think tank's session on ethics.

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WALTER SHAUB JR: The president-elect must show those in government and those coming into government after his inauguration⁹ that ethics matters.

OVERBY: Trump didn't divest. Unlike any previous presidents, he owns companies worldwide and the conflicts of interest they present. But that was hardly the only ethics battle between Shaub in the White House. The Office of Government Ethics urged new cabinet members to sell off assets that would cause conflicts of interest. It pressured the White House to publish the personal financial disclosure of top aides, which is supposed to be public by law. Shaub pushed for White House records of ethics waivers for appointees with conflicts. Norm Eisen is a former ethics counsel in the Obama administration and now a strong critic of President Trump.

NORM EISEN: OGE held the president accountable, and I think Walt gets a lot of credit for that.

OVERBY: To almost everyone's surprise, many citizens really cared. OGE started getting calls, letters, emails, Twitter followers¹⁰. Here's Shaub in an April interview with NPR.

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SHAUB JR: We've even had a couple days where the volume was so huge it filled up the voicemail box, and we couldn't clear the calls as fast as they were coming in.

OVERBY: But at the same time, the White House controversies¹¹ have cast a shadow over the federal ethics laws themselves. This is Danielle Brian, head of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight¹².

DANIELLE BRIAN: Previous administrations have sort of cared a lot about trying to do something about a violation¹³ of those conflicts of interest standards, and we have an administration now that honestly doesn't care.

OVERBY: Brian said she used to assume existing laws were good enough to let people see whether or not the president had conflicts of interest.

BRIAN: It turns out that the laws don't do that. And Shaub I think made a valiant¹⁴ effort in trying to at least let the public understand what it is that we actually don't know.

OVERBY: Through all of this, Shaub has kept a low profile, as befits a career civil servant.

MEREDITH MCGEHEE: Really he had been fairly quiet. I don't know that I could have said who is the head of the Office of Government Ethics before he spoke⁷ out.

OVERBY: This is Meredith McGehee, a lobbyist for ethics reform and an adviser¹⁵ to the Campaign Legal Center. The center is where Shaub is moving later this month - a nonprofit group of lawyers who handle campaign finance, election law and now ethics law. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.

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