Official Trump Swamp Thread: Still Corrupt as Fuck

The White House disclosed Wednesday evening that it has granted ethics waivers to 17 appointees who work for President Trump and Vice President Pence, including four former lobbyists.

The waivers exempt the appointees from certain portions of ethics rules aimed at barring potential conflicts of interest. In letters posted on the White House website, the White House counsel's office wrote that the waivers were in the public interest because the administration had a need for the appointees' expertise on certain issues.

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The rate at which the Trump White House has handed out waivers is far faster than that of the Obama administration, which issued 17 exemptions for White House appointees over eight years.

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Trump has granted more lobbyist waivers in 4 months than Obama did in 8 years
Violating his own ethics rules at a staggering pace.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump presented himself as the ultimate outsider who would rid Washington of special interest corruption and “drain the swamp.” And immediately after taking office, he signed a flashy executive order tightening restrictions on lobbyists’ work in the executive branch.

But he immediately began to staff the administration with people whose work seemed, on its face, to clearly violate the terms of the order. Rather than publicly grant waivers of ethics rules with a clearly stated rationale, the White House was simply routinely waiving ethics rules in secret so nobody knew how many waivers were issued or for what purpose.

After extensive back and forth with congressional Democrats and the Office of Government Ethics, Trump has finally provided documentation, and it shows that the ethics rules are plainly meaningless. He’s granted five times as many waivers in his first four months in office as Obama did, which cover key figures in the administration like Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon, and counselor Kellyanne Conway. All told, 17 waivers were granted to members of the White House staff, and we still have no idea how many waivers have been granted for other executive branch agencies or whether anyone is even keeping track.

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The Office of Government Ethics next week will release copies of about two dozen ethics waivers for officials working at federal agencies showing which members of the administration are working on issues they handled in their private-sector jobs, agency director Walter Shaub said.

The new waivers are in addition to ones President Donald Trump granted to at least 16 White House officials—copies of which the administration released earlier this week.

In his first four months in office, Mr. Trump granted as many waivers to White House officials as Mr. Obama did in eight years in office. Over the course of his two terms, Mr. Obama also granted about 50 waivers to officials in federal agencies, not including the White House; in four months, Mr. Trump has already handed out about half as many.

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President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel received roughly $270,000 in payments linked to Saudi Arabia as part of a lobbying campaign by the Gulf kingdom against controversial terrorism legislation last year.

The payments—for catering, lodging and parking—were disclosed by the public relations firm MSLGroup last week in paperwork filed with the Justice Department documenting foreign lobbying work on behalf of Saudi Arabia and other clients.

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On Monday, the Trump Organization announced plans for a new three-star hotel chain with a patriotic flair, echoing President Trump’s campaign slogan about putting America first and reflecting the organization’s promise to enter into new deals only in the United States. The intention is to differentiate the chain, called American Idea, by featuring artifacts of American culture in the hotels, such as an old Coca-Cola machine in the lobby or American-made sundries in the rooms.

And while the Trump Organization and its business partner say the down-market move is not about politics, the president’s business is inherently viewed through that lens: The chain will make its debut in little-known towns in Mississippi, a state in the heart of Trump country that favored him over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 18 percentage points. The organization’s business partner in Mississippi is a family-owned hotel company whose co-owner met Mr. Trump at a campaign event last summer and donated to his campaign.

This new chain is an unlikely venture for a company commonly associated with luxury accommodations in upscale locations, and it indicates that the Trumps see dollar signs in the vast support the campaign received from conservative areas well beyond major cities. The first hotels are expected to come online quickly because they will involve rebranding existing properties like Holiday Inns and Comfort Inns.

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Louis Gossett Jr said:

This was probably a good idea from the start of the trump brand, though I suppose the brand required the faux rich persona to be formed first so that the rubes could eat it up.

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warak said:

gonna make the motel 6 into "mini trump towers", rubes won't care as long as there is Trump Light.

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Louis Gossett Jr said:

This was probably a good idea from the start of the trump brand, though I suppose the brand required the faux rich persona to be formed first so that the rubes could eat it up.

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Until this board turnover, the Eric Trump Foundation pretty much did what it told its donors it would: send its money to St. Jude. But starting in 2011, more than $500,000 was redirected to a variety of other charities, many of which were personal favorites of Trump family members and several of which had nothing to do with children's cancer--but happened to become clients of Trump's golf courses.

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