Thank you. I want to thank everyone coming out today and those joining us this morning via cspan. My name is jamie horowitz, im on the Headliners Committee here at the National Press club. On behalf of our president , jeff, and our 3,000 members, were honored today to have mr. Walter shaub jr. With us. I want to say that yesterday as i was driving perhaps more accurately, stuck in washington traffic listening to radio news and despite all the drama going on about health care, i was taken by the fact that so many of the news stories had words like, emoluments clause, thics, rich peoples problems, legal precedent, those kinds of phrases in story after story after story. All those stories had to do with President Trump and his relatives. One had to deal with the new White House Communications director and the pending sale of his company to chinese investors. So the question today, are these just rich peoples problems or are they serious challenges to our democracy . Our speaker today hopefully will answer that question a lot more. Im told just earlier this month he was the director of the office of government ethics. O. G. E. Is an independent agency that aims to prevent conflicts of interests on the part of Government Employees and works to resolve conflicts when they occur. Mr. Shaub, im sure hell tell you more about his background but hes a virginia native that graduated from James Madison university and received his law degree here in washington at the american university. And prior to working at o. G. E. , he had worked as a government lawyer but also in private practice. And today, i guess for the last two weeks, hes at the Campaign Legal center and im sure hell tell you about his work there. Rather than me saying anything else, let me turn it over to him and then after he gives some brief remarks well open it up to questions from the room. Thank you. Walter well, thanks for having me today. Shaub, id, im walter and my focus is on ethics in general. Prior to that i was with the office of government ethics and my focus was more specifically government ethics. I have worked i had i got to get used to the past tense worked at the office of government ethics since 2001 except for a couple of years when i went to a law firm in between. Prior to that i had worked in a number of federal agencies and in fact even when i was in a law firm, my work involved federal agencies. Career has whole been on federal service and federal employees and ethics more broadly. And in that context, i had a lot of time working with the Government Ethics Program. I saw how it was supposed to work. What i can say unequivocally that ethics really has no party. Both Major Political parties have always been incredibly supportive of the Government Ethics Program and neither can really claim sole credit for having built it. That and and in fact as i worked with both the administrations of president george bush and barack obama, i can say that in every encounter that i ever had with both white houses, and i worked closely with the white house because i handled their president ial nominees, they were always incredibly supportive of the Government Ethics Program. In fact, in terms of my daytoday interactions, i couldnt distinguish the difference between the Bush Administration and the obama administration. So with that context, this past eight months and i say eight months because my work with this administration began during the president ial campaign has been an absolute shock to the system and i would say that we are truly in an ethics crisis right now. And somethings got to be done about it. Thats partly why i left because i reached the end what i thought i could achieve there and one of the things i want to proposals ide is for improving the Government Ethics Program. In addition, i think the crisis were facing was experienced very acutely in the Government Ethics Program but its part of a broader assault on the institutions of our representative form of government. And so i hope to broaden my focus in my new job. In order to talk about how i think we have to address the Ethics Program in the executive branch, i want to give you a little bit of a primer on that Ethics Program because its important to understand what were talking about when we say the Ethics Program. Its really made of three components and thats the rules and regulations that set the absolute bare minimum floor for what you have to do in order to not be a criminal or not be a civil violator or not be a rule breaker. And so they are not as overburdensome as they could be if we were trying to say heres what you should aspire to. Theres also Ethical Principles and ethical norms. So you got the rules and regs, Ethical Principles and ethical norms. Those are three distinct and interrelated things that are absolutely essential to the functioning of that program. The Ethical Principles are real actual thing and i can hold this up because all you really need to see is this number is 14, and theyre written out. I printed this off of o. G. E. s wedge page. These 14 very specific principles come to webpage. These 14 very specific principles come to us george h. W. Bush entered way back in 1989 and tweaked a little bit in 1990 but they actually are separate and distinct. Part of the Ethics Programs, they have been incorporated in o. G. E. s rules and there is a provision, wherever i need the individual rules dont apply, you apply these 14 principles to evaluate what can and cannot happen. A Government Employee could be fired for breaking those principles even though there isnt a specific rule on the point. And rather than reading you all 14 ill just give you a couple examples. I mean, theres the principle that you should not engage in Public Service for private gain. And an agency could actually fire an employee for misusing their official position to actually benefit someone that theyre close to. You got an impartiality rule that say you got to protect the governments operations by being impartial in your dealings with the public and with businesses. The president has not strictly covered in a technical legal sense that apply to federal employees, but they normally try to adhere to it. The president started tweeting out how everybody should go buy eddie bauer products because they supported him in the position. Thats misuse of position, abuse of authority. Even though its not strictly illegal, its a departure and its a problem. Another one of the edcal principles talks about disclosure of waste, fraud and abuse. And we get into some tricky areas if you do an overbroad clamping down on what you call leakers. You have the administration calling things leaks that are not at all leaks. Like when o. G. E. Decides to fulfill its mission to communicate with the public about important matters of government interest, they call that a leak. Well, its an official release, not a leak. Or when this week Anthony Scaramucci talks about going to the f. B. I. Or d. O. J. Because somebody released his public Financial Disclosure report which says public at the top and has a discussion of the release mechanism. So these are Ethical Principles and the departure from them is every bit of a threat as any violation of a specific rule. Theres also ethical norms. And im going to talk about why theyre important a little bit later, but lets just talk about what they are. These ethical norms include the tradition that our modern president s have followed in divesting their conflicts of interest. And that sets the tone from the top. When you dont do that you run into problems. We another example is with president ial nominees. The law of governing conflicts of interest that apply to them when they come into government is not a prohibitive holding statute. There are some but i am talking about the main primary conflicts of interest that apply to all of the nominees. And instead its a recusal statute that says if you have a financial interest in a matter thats going to be directly and predictably affected by it, you cant participate as a government official. So you could literally comply with that particular statute as the secretary of energy if you held exxon and chevron and b. P. And just sat at your desk with your feet up reading the newspaper all day. The problem is you cant run the department of energy that way. And so an ethical norm that has evolved is that o. G. E. And executive Branch Agency ethics officials run the program as a Risk Management program and they try to read the tea leaves as best they can and admittedly its more art than science to predict what kind of matters that will come up that a nominee is going to have to get involved in. And they reduce risks by having them divest it. For the First Time Ever and i dont want to impugn all nominees in this administration. Some of them have been cooperative. But for the First Time Ever were having a number of nominees or theyre having a number of nominees at o. G. E. Who are pushing back on literally everything. And even some of the basic assumptions of the ethical norms that you have to divest things that are likely to be a conflict. One other example that i wanted to offer you was that last year when i was the director of o. G. E. , i managed to get through a regulation and it was not intended to a lastminute rule change. We had been working on it for a couple of years and the rules moved slow, the regulatory process. I amended the gift rules to say that even the rules say you cant accept gifts and then it gives some exception. You can accept gifts in these conditions but i have the rule now saying, employees should consider declining otherwise permissible gifts if they believe that a reasonable person would knowledge of the relevant facts would question the employees integrity or impartiality as a result of accepting the gift. And it focuses on a number of factors that employees should consider including whether the gift has a high market value, whether there is an appearance that the donor is trying to influence them, whether the person has interests that could be directly affected by the employees specific duties as opposed to just an interest in the agencys work generally. And this is an important one, and i valued this one the most. Whether it would provide the donor with significantly disproportionate access to the access. And so you have wealthy groups or organizations able to make donations in the form of, come to our event, and heres a gift exception that says you can go to an event. Its perfectly ok to rely on an exception. If you are going to an event when you are hearing one vide sides view on the issue then theyre buying influence or at least appear to be buying influence and the gift is appearancebased than actual conflictbased because the odds youll change everything because you got one scalloped wrapped in bacon is not likely. But we have to protect even the appearance of the governments integrity. And that is one of the Ethical Principles. And its and so this articulates a new ethical norm for the gift rules. Interestingly, by the way, that rule applies to the president and then admonition applies to the president. By statute. The problem is, it was never intended to be an enforceable rule because we done want people relying on exceptions and then having their heads chopped off and they lose their job because they relied on a perfectly acceptable exception but somebody elses analysis of this standard was different. So its not literally enforceable in the sense of penalties, but its trying to create a new ethical norm because its valuesbased. A lot of people talk about rulesbased and valuesbased Ethics Programs. We absolutely have to have a rulebased program so that theres a floor, but this is an example of a valuesbased rule that tries to push the people to go further. And the problem of the valuesbased program can be that the question comes up, whose values . Well, by putting this in this regulation and putting employees on notice, were saying, this is a value of the government. This is the value should adhere to. Its not open to anybody deciding you cant or can do something. But youre only going to have that addition be effective if you have an administration sending the message that ethics really matters, that ethical norms really matter and that people should adhere to these types of aspirational requirements. When you have an administration under the leadership of counsel to the president like don mcgann, you have an attitude of bare minimum compliance, in my view. And so a rule like this is just going to fall on deaf ears, and i challenge them and i hope theyre able to meet this challenge to show me an example of where somebody applied that value and decided to decline a gift because that would be wonderful and they would deserve credit, this administration, for having achieved that. So make us all proud. Tell us youve achieved that. The problem is not confined to the Ethics Program, though. We are looking at Broader Society experiencing some of these problems. You have a president criticizing Law Enforcement officials, firing one and threatening to fire others or implying that hes going to fire others, criticizing them publicly as hes done jeff sessions. Attacking the press, calling them the enemy of the people. Can i just tell you here at the press club, you are not the enemy of the people. [laughter] you are a valuable institution that is part of what makes our country great. In fact, it was so important it was the First Amendment that had to be added to the constitution. And as i said before, going too far in cracking down on leaders leaders leakers could affect whistleblowing. Of course we dont want people disclosing classified information, but, again, when you have ryan of the new yorker reporting that Anthony Scaramucci was outraged that it was leaked that somebody went to a dinner, thats fairly outrageous. So why does it matter . It matters because norms are the glue that holds society together. And i heard a media personality who i respect yesterday on tv say we should all stop talking about norms. Why norms . And i got her point. It sounds soft. And so maybe it communicates to a broader audience i need to come up with a jazzier, more scary sounding. Ven if the word sounds esoteric, the meaning is important. People see a crime being committed on the street, somebody being mugged, they call the police. Its an ethical norm. Most neighborhoods, most parts of the country people call the police when theres a crime unless something has completely broken down in that neighborhood which happens sometimes. But theyre not usually legally required to do it. I read about a new england state once that had 100 fine for the guilty bystander and that sort of what the seinfeld episode at the end, they were prosecuted for not acting. Reality it doesnt happen. It was funny in a sitcom. We can account to people having the norm. If you dont you have utter chaos. Thats why norms are important. My advice to reporters in particular, report on departures from norms, not just strictly violations. And theres two reasons for that. One, a lot can slip away and a lot of harm can happen before you have an actual violation. And, two, it reinforces this attitude that i per receive now, maybe thats perceive, now, maybe thats not in my head. Don mcgann adopting bare minimum compliance and you dont want to vay date that kind of approach by only talking about violations. And then for my part, i got a legislative proposal that i but just making, going back i guess i will stay within time so you have plenty of time to ask questions. What ill do is talk about the egislative proposal. And this is my proposal at this point. I am working with groups to try to refine it so its got more buyin. My personal thinking is we need to clarify o. G. E. s authority to make it clear that o. G. E. Has authority over the entire executive branch which was the intent of congress when they passed the statute. Here was a case in 1995 in the district of columbia, federal circuit that called into question whether the white house is an agency for all purposes. I think people have missed this act that posted on o. G. E. s website is a form the white house filed this year in which they declared that theyre a federal agency because they relied on a Legal Authority to accept outside contributions to cover their official travel that only applies to federal agencies and only federal agencies are required to file that form. So its at odds to the claim they have raised they are not a federal agency and therefore they are not covered by o. G. E. s organic statute which says o. G. E. Has authority over every executive agency so theres some inconsistency there. They want to be an executive agency when it means they can accept gifts but dont want to be an executive agency when it means they can be held accountable for ethics. Thats a nice deal if you can get it. Increase o. G. E. s authority to access access to information and records. I would like to see o. G. E. Have subpoena authority and i like to see it enforceable by a court. I ran into the experience recently where i was fighting to get waivers from the white house and these are routine ethics requests. Its a routine oversight activity o. G. E. Conducts as the supervising Ethics Office for the executive branch and i got a letter from mick mulvaney, the director of the office of management and budget that he copied to every single general counsel in every single were talking potentially hundreds of people saying that o. G. E. May lack the authority and they need to dig in deeper whether they should respond to this routine request. And obviously thats a very intimidating letter to send to Agency Ethics officials and general counsels because hes the person that controls their budget. And so i came back as hard as i knew how and they wound up releasing the waivers. And then again getting back to ethical norms, i discovered that 10 of them were unsigned, undate and retroactive and so, again, we have the departure from the ethical norms. I do think there should be additional investigative authority. I dont think it should rest with o. G. E. Thats where i differ from some people making recommendations. But having been on the inside, i think that the office of government ethics performs a very important prevention role and their form of prevention role people have to be willing to come to you and ask you advice before they do things. Whens the last time you went up to a Police Officer and asked if you could cross the street here in the middle . People wont go to the cop. You have to separate you still have to have that separation. My idea is theres a lot of entities in the federal government. Agencies, the white house. Whether they want to claim they are not an agency, lets call them the white house, and inspectors general themselves. These entities dont have very small agencies dont have inspectors general. So if there was one central Inspector General for the executive branch who had jurisdiction over every office and employee in the executive branch who doesnt have an Inspector General, that would plug all the gaps. Id like to have them have a special responsibility to o. G. E. Where if o. G. E. Asks them to investigate something they have the independence to decide whether to investigate it or not. But if they decline, id like them to have to notify congress d o. G. E. In writing of the reasons why they were declining. To put your name to that would make sure o. G. E. Would have the support they needed. Now, obviously there would have to be exceptions when it would interfere with an Ongoing Investigation or National Security to release that. But in all other cases i think it should be posted on the website. I think o. G. E. Needs to be more independent. Its director needs to be removed with cause only with 30 days notice both to the director and to the congress and o. G. E. Needs legislative and bypass authority which means they can talk to Congress Without having to get permission from the white house or o. M. B. Theres nuanced rules you can respond to letters from Congress Asking you questions. But to just submit a legislative proposal or budget you have to go to o. M. B. First. Id like them to be able to send those simultaneously to o. M. B. And the legislative branch so that congress could have the information it needed without having it filtered. I think o. G. E. Needs to be able to enforce ethics rules. Id like them to have a civil action in court for Civil Penalties unless the department of justice chose to initiate the action or to take over the action after o. G. E. Had initiated it. Id like to remove some overly burdensome due process procedures that established way too complicated a mechanism for o. G. E. To pursue recommendations of disciplinary action or order people to stop engaging in things that violate the rules. O. G. E. Hasnt traditionally engaged in much of that because they went too far on the protections and o. G. E. Cant do that work. Id like them to tighten the revolving door by extending the restriction on postemployment for senior employees, senior officials, people at my level when i left the government to two years instead of one year. And that would keep them from going back to their agencies to represent somebody for two years. Id like to see a recusal obligation for anybody who comes into government and gets a special payment, something discretionary from an employer on the way in. Right now it would be illegal for somebody to give you a payment after you go into government before going into government but theres a loophole. You can give it before their first day and its perfectly legal and theres a regulation that carves out a very narrow swath. This is technical. It applies only to party matters, matters involving specific parties actually engaged as parties in the matter. Id like the recusal obligation to be statutory. Id like it to come with Civil Penalties. Id like it to be so broad that its any particular matter affecting the financial interests of the person who gave you a payment and id like it to last two years, if not four. And so that would presumably i hope deter people from giving you special payments because it means you are going to be sitting on the sidelines and not doing anything to help them. Id like to see a twoyear recusal instead of one year for past clients and employers. Id like to amend the ethics and Government Act to prohibit Public Officials from receiving compensation for the use of their names, their familys names. Id like to see an increase in transparency where certain types of ethics records should go on o. G. E. s website and gency ethics website but i dont think it should apply to every advice they give. My concern there is o. G. E. Cant be prevention mechanism and ethics officials cant be the prevention mechanism if they know everything they say to you when they come for advice will be slapped up on the when page. I think there are certain concrete actions that can be defined clearly like waivers, any kind of authorizations, anything to do with ethics agreements or compliance with ethics agreements. Anything to do with certificates of divestiture or training records. And any other kind of approvals like approval to accept a gift. And i would like to see a new disclosure requirement for a narrow set of people. The top layer of government. Technically its people covered by section 13 of the stock act, for any lawyers out there who want to research that. But its the top layer of government. Id like them to have to disclose business liabilities of any business that they still have a large interest in. If they were recently an officer, director, employee of that organization or their family controls it as long as its a private organization. Im less worried about publicly traded companies. I would like to free up some resources by removing the requirement to disclose income from publicly traded assets. Your average middleclass federal employee could fill out their Financial Disclosure report in 15 minutes. But having to look up how much they earn from a mutual fund or a stock thats publicly traded and go over each quarterly report, that turns it into a two or threehour affair. I think that removing that requirement would free up a lot of resources of the Ethics Program to focus on more significant disclosure issues. So im not all more is more. There is one area where i think less is more. I think people have to disclose discretionary trust. Id like to see that as a new requirement. Discretionary trust are trusts where youre a beneficiary and the trustee has total discretion to give you a payment or not give you a payment. Id like to and right now you dont have to disclose the Underlying Holdings of a trust like that. You dont even have to disclose that the trust exists. So for all we know there could be plenty of people over the coming years who file Financial Disclosure reports and maybe they are the beneficiaries of assets and have an interest in trying to advance those but were not going to know about it. So id like to see that as a requirement added to the Disclosure Rules. Id like to salvage the blind trust program. You hear a lot about blind trust. Let me tell you the exact number that are in the executive branch. Zero. So its not hard for me to remember that number. Paulsen ne was henry 2006 and its because the apartment is fairly unworkable. If we create a mechanism with lind trust youd a new level against conflicts of interest. What id like to do is authorize managed accounts rather than trusts. You can walk into a Financial Institution right now and say id like to sign up for a managed account and somebody will buy and sell assets for you and its not going to qualify as a blind trust. But if we could have some requirements to ensure you dont know what theyre buying and selling, that would be so feasible to be able to just enter into it that you may even get to the point where you not only have top government officials entering into these things but people at all levels. And id love to have a day where instead there are reporting there are zero i could report there are 4,000. And so thats one thing that i think could really make a change. One other change i got two more. One other is having to do with special Government Employees. And this is something senator grassley has been pushing. Its currently his interpretation. While i was in the executive branch i was bound by the department of justices interpretation. And that is if the current interpretation of the executive branch is, if youre appointed as a special Government Employee, you can serve forever, you know, for the whole year and show up every single day and still be a special Government Employee as long as they had a good faith belief when they designated you that you were only going to serve for 130 days or less. And then fewer ethics rules apply to you. Id like it to be consistent with what senator grassley has said, to be that at 130 days you turn into a pump kin. You dont get to be an s. G. E. Anymore. Instead of being a special Government Employee, you either have to leave or become a regular Government Employee. And then all the rules apply. So either of those would be an acceptable outcome to me. Then, of course, id like to address president ial conflicts of interest. Now, these other ones i talked about are sufficiently technical and bureaucratic and i hope i havent put you to sleep but that im hoping there will be noncontroversial. This one i get that were in a hyperpolarized society right now and so people will have a hard time from both sides of the aisle being able to take a look at this issue. But i think its important because weve always been free of president ial conflicts of interest since the ethics and Government Act was enacted and now were not and you see the president flying around giving free advertisements to his properties. You see foreign governments and businesses and charities and even political officials Holding Events at his properties. And its just inextricable the conflicts of interest. So id like to have a prohibition on president ial conflicts of interest. It cannot be a recusal requirement like the existing statute. We need our president to participate in everything, but you could have a rule that prohibited the holding of assets and it would need to have plenty of reasonable exceptions. Id be ok with the president having more exceptions than even the rank and file employees because this is unlike the other one which is a recusal statute and actual prohibited holding statute. Now, in terms of penalties, id like the penalty to be, youre a violator. You cant really impose penalties for this. There is an impeachment mechanism. There is you could have a requirement that Somebody Just simply has to divest. Thats the cure for violating the rule. But Congress Already has a constitutional mechanism to address violations of law by a president so its enough that it says its illegal to hold certain holdings. And i think we need to clarify that nepotism, the antinepotism statute applies to the white house. On the first day of this new administration, the office of Legal Counsel and the department of justice rolled that back, and i think its created some difficulties. So id like to see this statute amended to make clear. Now, of course, there has to be an exception for the president s spouse. But that should be the limit of it. So anyways, those are the types of things that id like to see happen and im going to be working with various groups to see where we can find commonalities, work with the folks at c. L. C. To see what they want to sign onto as specific official position. And i just want to say im really looking forward to continuing working in this area and broadening my focus. The Campaign Legal center is a terrific group. I hope everybody will go and check it out on their website now that i dont have a conflict of interest and talk about them. They are incredibly they are involved in incredibly important litigation there. They are leading a case that could end political gerrymandering which is something that could transform the society and the oral arguments are this october. So check them out. Follow this case. Its an incredibly important case, and lets keep our fingers crossed for an end to political gerrymandering. So [applause] jamie so with that we are going to open it up to questions. If you have a question, i would ask you to identify yourself by name and your news organization. So lets throw it up to the floor. Questions. Yes, in the back. With federal computer week. In the past you spoke out about the president s plans place his holdings in trust with his son. In terms of that plan and g. S. A. Leaks specifically, do you think that is [inaudible] do you think action needs to be taken on that front . What congressional avenues do you see as picking up the mantle on ethics issues . Walter do i need to repeat the question for tv or do they have sound . Ok. Great. So the first question was about the president s plan to set up a trust run by his kids and whether more needs to be done on that. I said it back in january and nothing has changed. Its worthless. Its meaningless from a conflicts of interest perspective. He still has a full financial interest in it and its not a blind trust. He just signed a Financial Disclosure report that lists his holdings. So not only he but everyone in the world knows what they are. And so there isnt really more to be said about it except what needs to be done is he needs to divest. He needs to sell those assets. The second question i just forgot. Second question is what congressional avenue do you see picking up the mantle . Walter what congressional avenues do i see picking up the charge of reforming the Ethics Program . I had an excellent bipartisan call with chairman gowdy and Ranking Member cummings from the House Oversight committee. Its actually o. G. E. s Oversight Committee and will be working on their reauthorization legislation. They would be open reading a letter from me to describe the kinds of things im talking about now which i greatly appreciate. Its you can send letters to people all day until youre blue in the face or your hands are tired from signing them but its wonderful to have people say they would actually take the time to read it. So i was very enthusiastic about our call and so im hoping the two of them are interested. Im hoping the senate Oversight Committee for o. G. E. , the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee will take this up as well. If they pursue the reauthorization of o. G. E. , of course, they will need to take a look at whether theyre going to make changes to o. G. E. Statute. And i hope that the senate will use any nomination hearing for any nominee to become the director of the office of government ethics to talk about the president s conflicts of interest, ask any new nominee with their position on it is and see if they can explore what some new nominee would endorse as legislative proposal and whether they can count on that individuals support for trengthening this program. Keri from the center of public integrity. You had mentioned earlier there was a crop of nominees for this administration that really pushed back against counsel to divest from a holding. What was the outcome of that . Was it that they wound up being instructed to divest, that the agreement called them to divest or was there a blunting of that . Are they divethsing less than you normally would see . Walter so she asked about my comment about some of the nominees pushing back on the ethics process and what was the outcome . Im happy to report the outcome is good. And to their credit, every one of them ultimately did what we asked. Its just that i saw people in my hallways when i was working there literally slapping their forehands and the refrain they would all say, why is everything a fight, and why are some questions being asked never asked before . Its not all of them. Some of them have been cooperative. So the good news is i feel confident saying during my time there all of the ethics agreements are consistent with what we did before and theyre posted on o. G. E. s website so its all public knowledge. I am not talking inside baseball here. But, you know, i hope they continue holding that line going forward. Weiner. If you are comfortable answering this that would be fantastic. Did you look at or do you have an opinion on the president s potential financial history with russia, including bank loans, including by a third party . And do you think with him and members of his white house family team have an impact on their attitudes towards sanctions and policies versus russia . Thats the first question. The second one which is hot in the news. 200 members of congress, led by congressman john conyers, dean of the house, have filed a lawsuit on emoluments on violations that they believe that the president has, including profits from the trump hotel, where he has foreign leaders and does fundraising. Is that in your view a violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution . Walter ok. So the first question was while i was at o. G. E. We looked at financial interests of the president or his family related to russia and whether i think thats interfering with their judgment on russia sanctions. Im not keen on talking about individuals whose reports we may have looked at. I cant really get into that. What i can talk about is the fact the only information o. G. E. Has access to is printed right there in the public Financial Disclosure reports that are now out in the public and have been circulated. And so thats part of why im interested in changing the statute to allow for the reporting or to require the reporting of certain Business Loans because the Financial Disclosure form only lists the Financial Holdings that you have. Any liabilities are strictly limited to your own personal liabilities and dont extend to the liabilities of businesses even if youre heavily intertwined with them through family control or past leadership and significant ownership interests now. So without even having to go into the individuals, what i can tell you is that kind of information just isnt available on the form and of course we dont have the president s tax forms. Yet another departure from the ethical norms of our society, so theres even less information than in the past. As to whats in their heads, i try to refrain from speculating about peoples intent. So i dont i dont know but i think the real problem is that you have to actually even ask the question, do these financial interests potentially influence russia sanctions . And to me and this gets back to talking about Ethical Principles, ethical norms and rules as three distinct components of the Ethics Programs, right there were already outside the realm of ethical norms if a president is continuing to hold onto financial interests and we have to ask the questions about what affect its having on them. So the question itself is the answer, that we shouldnt have that level of uncertainty because it casts a cloud over our government decisionmaking. The second question was about the pending emoluments clause litigation. I think what i have to do and this isnt an intentional dodge is defer to the folks who are involved in that litigation right now. Im not an expert in the emoluments clause, and while i was in the government i avoided studying it closely because the department of justice speaks for the executive branch in matters of litigation and so i didnt want to be articulating a viewpoint that was distinct from the department of justices viewpoint on that pending litigation. Ive only been out for a week and ive been talking to a lot of you an getting settled into my new office. So ill take a look at that issue. I think it would be premature. Again, it goes back to the question, we shouldnt be in the situation where we have to wonder, because if he didnt own these financial interests we wouldnt have a question about the emoluments clause. And so when people say the emoluments clause is an arcane area that hasnt been explored extensively and so its very difficult for the litigants to cite precedence, its because we havent had to. President s have resolved their conflicts of interest and so weve never been in this situation before to the extent that we are now and certainly not in modern times. I hope courts when they look at this case will look that eye towards realizing the precedent itself may not just be found in court cases but in the behavior of president s who have been careful not to have financial interests that could raise these questions. That is not an area of legal consideration in all cases, but where we have such an important constitutional provision and so little precedent, the court has to go looking and i hope the court will consider what past president s have done with an emphasis on recent past president s because the norms have evolved, but you have 40 years to look at. Ill let you pick it. The recommendations that you in would require action congress. Are you certain that republican lawmakers that you will be pressing these issues. Democrats have unveiled a number of ethics and other types of overhaul but you see that is not being embraced by republicans, so is that lawmakers that you are going to look to take this up from the republican side of the aisle. Walter any legislative changes going to need bipartisan essentially. And folks in one party on the hill, a number of them made proposals but a number havent. I absolutely agree. It goes back to one of the first things i said. We are going to need both parties in congress to come together and make some of these changes. When im talking about president ial conflicts of interests, these should be nobrainers, is from a number of experts. And these rules will apply to future administrations and so far, the white house has passed back and forth between different parties and assuming that continues and its a safe assumption using inducttive logic, congress should want to have a set of rules that will apply to people because a majority can be in the minority tomorrow, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Im hoping from there we build some support. I invite all members of congress to talk about it. I was greatly hartened by chairman gowdys interest in it. Senator grassley has been a advocate for Good Government issues. I quoted him and somebody on his staff says the senator stands by the quote that i quoted. So im confident that there are good people in both parties in congress who care about government ethics. I got a letter from congressman walter jones from North Carolina while i was in o. G. E. And my response is still on o. G. E. s website, at least recently it was. And he was expressing concerns about some of the ethics issues. Im 100 im sure there are both parties in congress that care about this and the trick is going to be finding them. But i invite you to find me, too. I want to follow up on that, i attended a talk with a member of congress who said that when he is talking to his colleagues, theyre surprised by just how fragile the government is, that in the last six months, they didnt know how much harm could be done within the law. You have been talking about norms. Is that your sense . And do you think that theres a growing sense that there is a need for more ethical reform on the hill for those reasons . Walter i feel like im perceiving that sense of surprise in a lot of corners, including congress. To give you a concrete of that rag it as two additional provisions. Much has been written recently about o. G. E. Having a lack of Enforcement Authority and how weak it is in a lot of areas. Let me thank the press for caring. When i was nominated for o. G. E. s director position, i said my goal was Public Outreach and i stood out on acorner doing jumping jacks saying look over here. And for the past six months, eight months, people have been looking finally. So thats helpful. But those stories about how weak g. E. Is, there is authority and power and a court can issue an order but the u. S. Marshal showing up on your door step. O. G. E. Has no u. S. Marshal it gets its power from two sources. One has always been the white house and because every president ial administration, republican and democratic alike have been always supportive of o. G. E. , for a lig micro agency, o. G. E. Had disproportionate access to the white house and could call up and saying we are having a problem with this person and the next day, we would get a call from them saying, what can we do for you, how can we help because the counsels office had called them. That went out the window this year. And only other source of leverage at all that o. G. E. Has is going public and talking to the public. And youll see the incredible pushback that o. G. E. Has received from that. I personally have been smeared and attacked by this white house and its surrogates, and thats hard. And im scared that what theyll achieve is detering other people from doing it because they dont want to suffer the attacks that i have. But its important that o. G. E. Keep doing it, but it highlights how incredible fragile the Ethics Program is because the leverage o. G. E. Has and beyond that, it has nothing. What can every citizen do in addition to convincing representatives to encourage Ethics Reform . Walter the question is what can average citizens do and these words i mean with all of my heart, participate in your democracy, get involved, talk to your members of congress about how important ethics is, the Ethics Program and the executive branch and also these other ethical norms of our Civil Society that we are departing from. Thats why im imploring the press today to think in terms of talking not only about specific violations, but departures from norms, because we have to catalog and keep track of whats being lost so we can hold onto it and rebuild it. And i dont mean that in any partisan sense whatsoever. This country, its norms, its Ethics Program have been supported by both parties and we have to count on both parties to bring it back. You can also support through volunteering or donations to Good Government groups that are aking a noise, campaignlegalcenter. Org. And speaking out when you see norms departed from. We have time for a couple of more questions. All the way in the back. What are your greatest concerns about the departure and the norms and holding on to some of that. How easy or difficult do you think it will be to rebuild . Walter the question is what is the biggest concern of departure of norms and how easy or difficult to bring it back . And im extremely concerned and the biggest concern is that norms evolve. If we have a shock to the system, what we are experiencing now could become the new norm. All the more reason for it to be reported on and covered and challenged before it takes root. When something happens like a special counsel mueller gets fired, that will be an extraordinary crisis for our country. I dont have even have the words for it yet and im sorry to say im trying to get the words together. It shouldnt happen and will be destructive to our society in ways we cant begin to fathom. The answer is how difficult it will be to change, the longer the departure, the more difficult they will be able to turn back. People have to be vigorous on holding to our norms in our Civil Society and the institution of our representative form of government, which includes the press. You are not part of the government but the constitution protects you in protecting our institutions. Rands corporation commentary indiscernible] i guess im wondering in the devils advocate kind of questioning why you feel the American Public who holds these values and norms in large part why they have delegated this you and your s, colleagues . Or do you think they dont perceive it. They think democracy will survive this administration and it will go down . Walter the question is why arent more people interested in protecting these norms and standing up and being heard. And you threw in the line or do they just not see it. And thats a really important comment. Unfortunately our society is superhyper polarized, people are seeing it through a lens of you are for or against us. Ethics isnt against or for any party and so are our norms. I disagree with the statement that a lot of people and im not sure if you meant that that a lot of people arent standing up. I think a lot of people are making noise and the reassuring thing is how much does our country does care and you are seeing that maybe not across the board but in some corners on both sides of the aisle. And so i think people are waking to the threat thats being presented to the nation that weve built here with the attacks on our institutions and it should be cause for great alarm. In particular, if mueller loses his position. But i do think its important to communicate about it. I think its important to try and talk in ways that are not partisan, because you have to invite people in to the discussion. And we have to do a better job of hearing each other in this country. We arent listening to each other and not reading each others news. Lets open our mind. So for my part, i have been trying to stay focused on issues that pose threats to our institutions, less talking about political issues. Somebody asked me about health care recently. You know, as a private citizen i have some views but im trying to stay focused on the specific challenges to our institutions, because i think there is crossover there where people from both parties care about our country and its institutions and can come together to try and reinforce that. Well take one last question. In all the financial disclose shurs this administration has extraordinarily wealthy people who use private companies that are difficult to penetrate. In some cases, it is difficult to tell what the underlying assets of a Holding Company or where conflicts might arise. Hard to look at a Shell Company in the bahamas and see where the conflict is here. I see when mr. Kushner refiled amended forms, there was a more extensive disclosure of diss closures in the end notes and how is o. G. E. Planning to deal it. Not to single people, but mr. Ross had companies that made it difficult to tell what the underlying assets were, this has come up a few times in this administration because you are dealing with wealthy people. How does o. G. E. Evaluate that. Is it going to maintain stakes. And walter basically there are a lot of really wealthy people coming into government and peered holdings with multiple shell companies, its hard to get your mind around the holdings and how do you evaluate conflicts. Thats a very significant problem were facing. One of the reasons for public Financial Disclosure reports to be public contrary to mr. Scaramuccis comments in the past 36 hours is that the public can dive in and there are Financial Experts out there. One thing i would say and i would say what can a private citizen and if you have a and are at en liberty to share information, you can write to the office of government ethics or write to congress and share your views that you have a First Amendment to communicate with government officials and or even just go to the press and let them deal with it. Because that expertise is incredibly valuable and crowd sourcing conflicts analysis dating all the way back to 1978 before anyone thought of that term. Thats one thing. The other thing is, it is very hard, she asked a question about one particular report thats been revised and i cant comment on that because i worked on it, but what i can say, the review process at o. G. E. Shakes out information that wasnt disclosed before because the Disclosure Rules are incredibly complex. And as part of that process, o. G. E. Talks to agencies or the white house about how they are managing these conflicts of interests. And so that is built into the process. And one of the best mechanisms is to ask the filer or ask the agency what the conflictsr particularly an agency that has very technical issues like the securities and exchange commission, because they have more expertise than o. G. E. In that specific area, which is why we have a decentralized ethics working out ,5,000 of the agencies. Its not a perfect process and the cure is to have people from all walks of life study these forms and particularly people of financial expertise speak out if they see something. I know that in the federal now nt gift giving that you are in the Nonprofit Sector and hope you will accept this as a token of our thanks. Walter thank you very much. [applause] thank you everyone for being here and those viewing at home. Were adjourned. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org we didnt tax our way. What we had in the 1990s was the Clinton Administration and gingrichled house and the senate, get to welfare reform and spending restraint and keep spending flat while the economy grew and revenues caught up to spending. Thats how you get to surplus and so much focus in this administration on getting economic growth. You cannot cut your way to a balanced budget. But you can keep that growth on spending and grow your way. Watch our interview with milk mulvaney tonight at 8 00 eastern and span, cspan radio cspan. Org. Cspan washington journal with news and policy issues. Coming up saturday morning, founder and president of the center for military readiness will talk about the future of transgender military members. Then bill piper of the drug policy alliance, a group that works to decriminalize drugs and discuss plans by the Trump Administration on the growing, marijuana. Use of and amy will talk about looking at the education of disadvantaged youth in the united states. Watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern. Join the discussion. Sunday on American History tv on cspan 3, two u. S. President s. At 6 00 p. M. Eastern, life and life that chronicle the of john kennedy. They never pushed photographers or writers away. They didnt care how they were photographed, or whether the tie was fixed or the coat was on. They knew if they made themselves accessible to the media, they would be published and of course, it was a ground swell. There is no question about it that the Media Coverage of j. F. K. Was the first time we have ever seen. At 8 00, president reagan with the pope. John paul ii, Ronald Reagan and the jub told story. John paul ii sent a cable to reagan when reagan was shot. And reagan sent a cable to the vatican saying im praying for you. And as for moscow, if theyre worried this point about a kinship between the pope and the president , that would have been really worried about it. American history tv, all weekend, every weekend