tweakabelle
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The former head of the US Govt ethics watchdog has launched a scathing attack on US President Trump, alleging that Trump's trashing of ethics guidelines and standards is turning the US into a "kleptocracy". The Guardian reports:
"The former head of the US government ethics watchdog has warned that Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest put the country at risk of being seen as a “kleptocracy”. Speaking to the Guardian, Walter Shaub, who quit this month as director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), condemned the president for using his hotels and other properties for government business in what is in effect a free advertising campaign.
“His actions create the appearance of profiting from the presidency, and the appearance here is everything, because the demand I’m making is so much more than ‘have a clean heart’. It’s: ‘Have a clean heart and act appropriately,’” Shaub said. “The fact that we’re having to ask questions about whether he’s intentionally using the presidency for profit is bad enough, because the appearance itself undermines confidence in government.” He added: “It certainly risks people starting to refer to us as a kleptocracy. That’s a term people throw around fairly freely when they’re talking about Russia, fairly or unfairly, and we run the risk of getting branded the same way. America really should stand for more than that.”
[snip]
Shaub said: “It’s wildly inappropriate for him to be running a hotel that he’s leasing from the federal government. As a president, you shouldn’t be doing business with the United States government. He’s his own landlord at this point.” Trump is the sole beneficiary of the trust and retains the power to revoke it at any time." Shaub said the steps Trump had taken were “meaningless” and he should at least have declared that he and his appointees would not attend events at his properties, removing the incentive for foreign businesses and politicians to hold gatherings there. “But he’s not willing to do that because he’s too busy running around giving free advertising to his properties,” he said.
[snip]
Trump has praised the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, leaders of countries where he has financial interests, Shaub noted. “Or you have his ban on people from certain Muslim-majority countries coming into the United States – and the countries excluded from that list, in that region of the world, include countries where he has significant financial interests. So this raises questions about the extent to which the United States’ interests are coming first.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/31/trump-ethics-chief-walter-shaub-kleptocracy
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