{"id":761,"date":"2026-06-29T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=761"},"modified":"2026-06-29T18:40:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:40:00","slug":"trumps-pick-for-ethics-czar-is-a-political-operative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=761","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Pick for Ethics Czar Is a Political Operative"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>The federal government\u2019s ethics czar has never not been a lawyer. One in four employees in the Office of Government Ethics is a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=759\">Ethics Panel Dismisses Misconduct Complaint Against Sen. Ruben Gallego<\/a><\/p>\n<p>President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to lead the agency, Michael Chamberlain, does not hold a law degree. He is, however, a loyal Trump ally.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like asking the gardner to be your cardiologist,\u201d said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a good government nonprofit.<\/p>\n<p>Chamberlain\u2019s background has raised concerns among former OGE employees and good government groups who are questioning whether Trump\u2019s nominee has the skill set and the independence to direct what has historically been a nonpartisan and legally-minded office.<\/p>\n<p>Chamberlain, who Trump nominated last week, is a former campaign operative who now leads the right-wing advocacy group Protect the Public\u2019s Trust. He previously served as an Education Department official in Trump\u2019s first term, after working on Trump\u2019s presidential campaign in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>His familiarity with the ethics office starts and ends with his time at Protect the Public\u2019s Trust, when he spearheaded ethics complaints and lawsuits against Biden administration officials. Few of the group\u2019s hundreds of actions during the former president\u2019s term led to any substantive findings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Chamberlain should explain whether his ardor for government ethics carried beyond just the Biden administration into the Trump administration and account for any difference in his activities during the two administrations,\u201d said Walt Shaub, who served as OGE director under former President Barack Obama and briefly under Trump, adding that his own work has consistently angered administrations of both parties.<\/p>\n<p>OGE signs off on financial disclosure forms for political appointees in agencies and the White House and helps to resolve their conflicts of interest. The OGE director has typically had a legal background as he helps agencies and appointees navigate potential conflicts and financial entanglements, and makes determinations of when violations of ethics law occur.<\/p>\n<p>Don Fox, who served as OGE\u2019s general counsel for five years and as its acting director for two starting in 2011, noted that past leaders of OGE, an agency created in the wake of the Watergate scandal, have always demonstrated a \u201cwillingness to call balls and strikes\u201d regardless of who was in power. Emory Rounds, a Trump appointee, consistently clashed with the first Trump administration after it began refusing to comply with the office\u2019s requests and agencies began unilaterally changing their ethics rules.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to be able to push back on agency leaders \u2026 and have a disagreement with the White House when that needs to happen,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=757\">Nancy Pelosi Lines Up Her Next Gig<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That, he argued, is even more important than having a law degree.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t have to have a career in government ethics or be a lawyer, but it strikes me he has no relevant experience,\u201d Fox said. \u201cI have serious misgivings about the person they\u2019ve chosen and the mission they\u2019ve asked him to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration has raised a slew of ethics concerns since taking office, including the entanglements of the president\u2019s and his family\u2019s businesses and potential conflicts throughout his Cabinet and top aides.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOGE needs an independent voice to ensure that the public is protected, and officials, even the president, are not placing personal or corporate interest before the public\u2019s interest,\u201d said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight. \u201cBy naming someone with a political history, OGE\u2019s ability to expose and remedy ethics violations will be limited and its essential mission tainted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The OGE director has final sign-off before any nominee\u2019s financial disclosure form is transmitted to the Senate for review. Fox cautioned that someone assuming a politically charged approach in the job could take \u201cshortcuts\u201d when passing those along. Stier, from the Partnership for Public Service, said that could lead to individuals receiving OGE approval despite having portfolios with a \u201cclear conflict with their job responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump fired David Huitema, the OGE director the Senate confirmed near the end of former Biden\u2019s tenure, weeks after taking office despite Huitema having just started a set five-year term. The agency has since been led by a rotating cast of appointees who hold other roles in Trump\u2019s government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople taking on OGE as a second job means the office has been lenient in an incompetent way,\u201d said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project. \u201c[Chamberlain] will professionalize the leniency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fox, the former acting director and long-time government attorney, also expressed concern that Chamberlain would be asked to gut OGE \u2013 the agency has just 58 employees, down 22% since Trump took office.<\/p>\n<p>OGE also plays a key role during presidential transitions, both in the lead-up to the election and immediately afterward to help the president-elect move nominees through the vetting process. If a Democrat is elected, Fox said, that person may refuse to work with OGE if it proves to be run on a partisan basis \u2013 or OGE could drag its feet in working with the incoming president, bogging down the transition process that Congress has enacted several laws over the last 15 years to institutionalize.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow would a Democratic nominee feel comfortable working with someone who is a Trump personal loyalist?\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/modernhomejournals.com\/?p=755\">Ruben Gallego\u2019s Campaign Lawyer Created a Mystery Nonprofit<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The White House did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Chamberlain runs a right-wing advocacy group that filed ethics complaints against the Biden administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agencies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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