Good morning. 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, ethics, 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 story trending yesterday had to do 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 u. S. Government employees and works to resolve conflicts when they occur. Mr. Shaub, im sure hell tell you much more about his background, more about his 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 much more 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. As he said, im walter shaub, one of the senior directors at the Campaign Legal center, 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. So really my whole career and focus has 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 is 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 houses 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 with them, 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 administration 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 had reached the end what i thought i could achieve there and one of the things i want to work on outside is proposals 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. These are three distinct but interrelated things that are absolutely essential to the functioning of that program. The Ethical Principles are real are a 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 webpage. These 14 very specific principles come to us from an executive order that president 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 at the beginning that says, wherever any of the individual rules do not apply, you apply these 14 principles to evaluate what can and cannot happen. A career Government Employee could be disciplined or 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 says that 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, by the standards of conduct that apply to federal employees, but they normally follow that, try to adhere to it as much as possible. An example where we ran into some trouble is where the president started tweeting out how everybody should go buy eddie bauer products because they supported him in the election. Thats misuse of position, abuse of authority. Even though its not strictly illegal, its a departure and its a problem. Another one of the Ethical 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 fbi or doj 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 all of 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 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 are going to 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 as a lastminute rule change. We had been working on it for a couple of years and the rules just moved slow, the regulatory process. But i amended the gift rules to say that even the rules say you cant accept gifts and then it gives some exceptions. 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 with 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 employers 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 disproportional access to the government. 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 our event. It is perfectly appropriate to rely on an exception. But if you are consistently going to an event when you are hearing one sides view on the issue then theyre buying influence or at least appear to be buying influence and the gift is more appearance to base than actual conflictbased because the odds that youll change everything because you got one scallop 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 that admonition applies to the president. By statute. The problem is, it was never intended to be an enforceable rule because we dont 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 subjective analysis of the 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 with 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 you 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 mcgahn, 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. 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 leadersracking down on leakers could affect whistleblowing. Of course we dont want people disclosing classified information, but, again, when you have 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. So maybe to communicate to a broader audience i need to come up with a jazzier, more important, scary sounding word than norms. They really are the rules that glue society together. Even if the word sounds esoteric, the meaning is incredibly important. I will just give you an example of the simplest norm in our society. People see a crime being committed on the street, somebody being mugged, they call the police. Its an ethical norm. In most neighborhoods, most parts of the country people call the police when theres a crime unless something has completely broken down in that neighborhood required to do it. Times. Once read about a town in new england that had a fine form by standing. For being a bystander. Count on people and that isa norm, why they are so important. My advice reporters in particular is to report on and notes from norms just strictly violations. A lot of harm can happen before you have an actual violation. Number two, it reinforces this attitude which i see. I perceive the White House Counsels Office of adopting an attitude of bare minimum compliance. You do not want to foster that attitude i only reporting on the violations. I have a legislative or i also hope to be making. Back, and i want to stay with in time to give you plenty of time to ask questions, so i will talk a little about the legislative proposal. Thisis my proposal at point. I am working with clc and other and refine it, but my personal thinking is that we ityd to clarify oges author to make it clear that it has authority over the entire executive branch. There was a case in 95 in the District Of Columbia federal circuit that called into question whether the white house is an agency for all purposes. Thisnk folks have missed submittedrm that was to declare themselves a federal agency. They wanted this for funding to cover their travel which only belongs to federal agencies. It is at odds with claims they have raised that they are not a federal agency, and therefore they are not covered by oges organic statute which says it has authority over every executive agency. So, there is some inconsistency. They want to be an executive agency when they can exact accept gifts but not when it comes to ethics. Oge haveike to see subpoena authority. I ran into the experience recently where i was fighting to get waivers from the white house. This is a routine oversight activity that oge does as the supervising executive supervising office of the executive branch. I got a letter from Mick Mulvaney that he town that he copied to every single counsel and ethics agent in the government saying that oge may lack the authority and that they should dig in deeper whether they should respond to this intimidating request. This is a very intimidating letter to send to the ethics counsel, because this is the office that controls the budget. Norms, iack to ethical found that 10 of these were soigned and retroactive, again we have departure from ethical norms. Having been on the inside, i think that the office of government ethics performs a very important prevention role. People have to be willing to come to you and ask for advice before they do things. When was the last thing he went up to a Police Officer and asked if you could cross the street here . People are not going to go to the cop, so you still have to have that separation. There are a lot of entities in the federal government agencies, the white house, and Inspector Generals themselves very small agencies do not have Inspector Generals. So, if there is one Inspector General who had authority over the entire executive branch, that would plug all caps all the gaps. I would like them to have wherel authority with oge if they decline to investigate, then they have to notify congress and oge as to the reasons why they are declining. The ie the Inspector General would have the authority they needed, but also the accountability when needed. Oge needs legislative and budgetary bypass authority which means it could talk to Congress Without having to get permission from the white house for omb. You can respond to letters from Congress Asking questions, but to submit a budget you have to go through omb first. I would like to be able to send and simultaneously to omb congress, so that congress can have the information they need without a filter. I would like them to be able to court. Civil act in federal unless the court took over authority. Oge has not traditionally engaged in much of that, because they went too far on the due process protections and oge cannot do that work. I would like to tighten the revolving door by tightening the ban from two years to one year. To anould keep them going agency in two years. Right now, it would be illegal for somebody to give you a payment after you go into government for going into government, but there is a loophole where you can give it before their first day and it is perfectly legal. So, there is a regulation that carves out a very particular swath. It only tends to apply to specific parties, but i would authority to be statutory. I would like it to include civil penalties. I would like it to be so broad that it includes every financial matter of the person submitting the payment. That would presumably, i hope, from giving you special payments, because it means you will be sitting on the sidelines and not doing anything to help them. I wouldve to see a twoyear recusal and not a one year for past clients and employers. See an increase in transparency were certain types of ethics records should but i dos website, not want it to apply to every single piece of advice they give which i see some people call for. My concern there is that oge cannot be the prevention mechanism if they know that everything they say to you, when they come for advice, is going to get slapped up on the webpage, but i think there are certain, concrete actions which can be defined clearly. Or example, waivers, authorizations, compliance agreements, certificates or training records, any other type of approvals such as the theoval to accept the figi gift. Technically, it is people covered by the section 13 of the stock act, but it is the top layer of government. I would like for them to have disclosed business liabilities of any business in which they still have a large interest in if they were a recently officer, director or employee of that organization. As long as it is a private organization. I am 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 about 15 minutes. Having to look up how much they earn from a mutual fund or a stock that is publicly traded and go over each quarterly report, it turns into a two hour or three hour affair. Removing that requirement would free up a lot of resources for the Ethics Program to focus on more significant disclosure issues. So, i think that is an area where less is more. I think people need to disclose Discretionary Trusts which are trusts where you are a beneficiary and the trustee has total discretion to give you a payment or not give you a payment. Right now, you do not have to disclose the Underlying Holdings of a trust like that or even if the trust exists. So, for all we know, there could be plenty of people over the coming years which file Financial Disclosure agreements and they may be the beneficiary of assets and have an interest in trying to advance those, but we are not going to know about it. So, i would like to see that as a requirement added to the Disclosure Rules. I would like to salvage the blind trust program. Let me to you the exact number of blind trust in the executive branch, it is zero. It is not hard for me to remember that number. The last one was Henry Paulson in 2006, and that is because the program is fairly unworkable. If we could come up with a new mechanism that actually created blind trusts, then you would have a whole new level of protection against blind interest. I would like to authorize managed accounts instead of a blind trust. Into a Financial Institution right now and sign up for a managed account. It will not qualify as a blind have some if we requirements where you do not know what they are buying or selling, then that would be so feasible to be able to enter into it that you could get to the point where you not only have top government officials entering these things but also people at all levels. So, instead of reporting that there are zero, there could be a day when i report that there are 4000. So, that is something i think that could really make a change. I have two more. One has to do with special Government Employees which something senator grassley has been pushing. It is currently his interpretation. While i was in the executive branch, i was bound by the current interpretation of the executive branch which is that if you are appointed as a special Government Employee then you can serve for the full year and show up every single day and still be a special Government Employee as long as they have a good faith when designated that you are only going to serve for 130 days or less. Then, fewer ethics rules apply to you. I would like it to be consistent with what senator grassley has said which is that at 130 days, you turn into a pumpkin. You dont get to be a special Government Employee anymore. Instead, you have to leave, or you become a regular Government Employee and all the rules apply. Either would be an acceptable outcome to me. Finally, president ial conflict of interest. These other points ive covered have been fairly technical and bureaucratic, but im hoping they will be noncontroversial. This one, i get that we are in a hyper polarized society right now, and so people have a hard time on both sides of the aisle being able to take a look at this issue. I still think it is important, freese we have always been of president ial issues and now we are not. You see foreign governments and businesses and charities and even political officials Holding Events at his properties. It is just inextricable the conflicts of interest, so i would like to have a prohibition on residential conflicts of interest. It cannot be a refusal requirement like the existing statute. It needs to be in everything. You could have a rule that prohibits the holding of assets, and it would have plenty of reasonable exceptions. I would be ok with the present even having more exceptions than rank and file employees because it is a different type of statute. Penalties, i would like the penalty to be that you are a violator. Imposingot really be penalties on this. You could have the requirement , butsomeone has to divest Congress Already has a constitutional mechanism to address violations of law by a president so it is enough to say that it is illegal to hold certain holdings. I think we need to reclarify the antinepotism statute applies to the white house. On the first day of this administration, the office of Legal Counsel roll that back, and i think it has created some difficulties. So, i would like the statute to be amended and made clear. There would have to be an exception for the president s spouse, but that should have to that that should have to be the only one. So, im willing to work with offices to see what the exceptions should be, what should be included, what their particular positions should be. I am really interested in broadening my focus. The Campaign Legal center is a terrific group. I hope you are able to check it out on their website now that i no longer have a conflict of interest. They are involved in an incredibly important litigation this year which is that they are leading the case which would put an end to political gerrymandering which is the type of thing that can transform a society. The oral arguments are this october, so check it out and follow this case. It is an incredibly important case, and lets keep our fingers crossed for an end to political gerrymandering. [applause] , we are going to open it up to questions. If you have a question, i would ask you to identify yourself by name and news organization. So, lets open it up the floor. Yes, in the back. [inaudible] do i need to repeat the question for tv . Ok, great. 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, it is worthless, meaningless to make conflicts of interest perspective. He still has a financial interest in it, and that is not a blind trust. He just signed a Financial Disclosure report that lists his notings, and so there is more that needs to be said about it except that he needs to that vest and sell his assets. And sellds to divest his assets. Second question i forgot ok, he wants to know what congressional avenues i see in taking up the charge of the Ethics Program. Ant last monday, i had excellent call with members of the House Oversight committee, it is actually owed ges Oversight Committee and will be working on their three on their reauthorization legislation. The said they would be open to talking about the types of things i just described it now. I greatly appreciate it. Day, itsend letters all is wonderful to have people say they would actually take the time to read it. I was very enthusiastic about our call, and i am hoping that the two of them are interested. Im hoping that the senate Oversight Committee will take this up as well. If they pursue the reauthorization of oge, then they will need to retake relook at whether they are going statke changes to the oge ute. Statute. Explore what the new nominee would endorse as a legislative proposal, and whether they could count on that individuals support for strengthening that program. Earlierad mentioned that there was a crop for nominees for this administration which really pushed back against counsel to divest from a holding. What was the outcome of that what was the outcome of that . Blunting of that . Did they divest less than what you would normally see . G asked about my comment about divesting she asked about my comment about divesting, and to their credit, most everyone of them did what we asked. It was just that i saw people in my Office Walking out slapping therefore heads and wondering why every single thing is andping there for heads wondering why every single thing has to be slapping their wondering why every single thing always has to be a fight. I hope they continue holding that line going forward. I want to bring up to items which have been very hot in the news. If you are comfortable answering them, that would be fantastic. Theou have an opinion on president s potential financial history with russia including via backlogs and thirdparty . Do you think that has an attitude towards sanctions and policies towards russia. The first that was question. The second was that 200 members of congress have filed a lawsuit on violations that they believe thepresident has including trump hotel. Your view, a violation in terms of the constitution . Was, the first question while i was at oge, did we look at relations between the president s family and russia. On talking about individuals whose reports we may have looked at, but i can tell you that the only information that oge has access to his printed right there on the public Financial Disclosure reports which have been circulated. That is partially why i am interested in changing the statute to allow for the dashboard to require the recording of certain business to requirelow the recording of certain business loans. Right now, it is strictly limited to your own personal liabilities and do not extend to the liabilities of businesses, even if you are heavily intertwined with them through family leadership or ownership interests. To go tout even having the individuals, i can tell you that that information is just andavailable on the form, so we do not have any of the forms which is another divergence from norms. So, we do not even have information from the past. I think the real problem is that you have to even ask the question, do these initial interest potentially influence russia sanctions . To me, this gets back to talking about Ethical Principles and ethical norms as a distinct ethical program. Right there, we are already outside the realm of ethical norms if the president is continuing to hold onto financial interests and we have to ask about the affect it is having on them. So, we should not have that level of uncertainty, as it can cast a cloud over all government decisionmaking. The next question was the litigation. Uments i think i have to dipole i think i would have to point you to the individuals involved in that particular case it now. While i was in the government, i avoided studying it closely, because the department of justice speaks for the executive branch in matters of dedication. So, i did not want to be articulating viewpoints that were distinct from the department of justices viewpoint on that pending litigation. I have only been out for a few weeks and getting settled into my new office, so i will take it look at that issue but i think it will be premature. Again, though, it goes back to that question where we should not even have to wonder in the first place. If you do not have these financial interests come up and we would not have concerns about that clause. Arcane areat is an which has not been explored recently, so it is difficult for the litigants to cite precedent. That is because we have not had to. President s have resolved their interest, and so we have not been in this issue to the extent that we are now. Certainly not in modern times. So, when the courts look at this case, i hope they look at it with an eye towards realizing that the precedent may not be found in court cases but in the haveior of president s who been careful to not have a financial interests which would raise these questions. This is not typically an area of legal question, but here we have such a particular area of constitutional provision and such little precedent. I hope the Court Considers what what pastents president s have done especially recent past president s. The recommendations that you have would require action in congress. Are there certain republican lawmakers that you will be going to to try and press these issues . Obviously, democrats have unveiled a number of types of but are therels, certain lawmakers you are looking to take this up on the republican side of the aisle . Essentially, any legislative changes will require bipartisan support. One party has made a number of ,roposals and the other has not and i absolutely agree. Again, it goes back to one of the first things i said was that ethics has no party. We need both major parties in congress to come together to make some of these changes. As i have said, these should not best these should be nobrainers. This is the advice of an expert who is done this for years and years, and these rules will apply to future administrations. So far in our country, the white forthhas passed back and between the two parties could assuming that continues the two parties. Continues,at congress would want a body of laws where the minority could be in the majority tomorrow. From there, i hope we so, im hoping from there we build some support. I invite all members of congress to talk about it. I was greatly heartened by chairman gowdys interest in it. Senator grassley has been a great advocate for Good Government issues. In fact, i quoted him on waiver issues, 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. 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 frag 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 a corner 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 o. E. O. 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 deterring 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 making 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. I think 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 to our officials, you and your 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 super hyper 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 Disclosures 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 disclosures 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. 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 private citizen and are at 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 Program and 4,5,000 working out 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 government gift giving now 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. [captioning performe sunday, unamerican history tv on cspan3, we look it to u. S. President s. At 6 00, jfks life in photos from the collection of images that chronicle the life of the 35th president. Thehe wonderful thing about kennedys is they never pushed photographers or writers away. They did not care how they were photographed. Whether the tie was fixed, this or that. They knew if they made themselves accessible to the media, they would be published and, of course, there was a groundswell. No question about it that the Media Coverage of jfk was a first time we had seen anything like it. 8 00at will be followed at looking at Ronald Reagans relationship with Pope John Paul the second. And paul ii, Ronald Reagan, the extraordinary untold story of the 20th century. Just like john paul ii sent Ronald Reagan a cable when he was shot that he was praying for him. And then Ronald Reagan sent a cable to the vatican saying he was praying for him. Areor moscow, if they worried at this point about a kinship between the pope and the president , now, they have to really worry about that. Tv, all we history can, every weekend on cspan3. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1970 nine, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. And is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. President trump was in new york on friday where he talked about the steps his administration is taking to fight dating violence and organized crime. He also commented briefly on the senates failure to repeal the Affordable Care act. This was held just before the president announced on twitter that he was replacing his chief staff with the homelands with the Homeland Security john kelly. This is 40 minutes. [applause] good afternoon. I am the acting director of the u. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as ice. As a career Law Enforcement officer i want to begin by saying, thank you. The work we have chosen, the job that we do is tough and i am honored to serve alongside so Many American patriots in this room today. To my fellow ice officers and agents in this room, thank you for the privilege of serving alongside you. I want to especially recognize