with the office of government ethics about that today, and they have to clarify their position. there s been waffling on that in response to the comments i have made. walter shaub and others. so i wait for a final determination what the oge is going to do. but these legal defense funds are ways to get money in to the pockets of the senior officials in the government. and that s not allowed. going on under president clinton and we strongly objected to it and the bush years nap got shut down. legal defense funds for current government officials should not be getting money from lobbyist and others and anonymous donations. that s an invitation to bribery and all sorts of other problems. if people need to raise money from private sources to hire criminal defense lawyers maybe they shouldn t be in the government. and then can take a hike and go to wherever they want out in the private sector. richard, always a pleasure talking to you. richard painter, chief white house ethics lawyer under
they did withdraw the request, one has to note but the thought i had was if it going to cost $25,000 an hour for you to work to fly around for your honeymoon, you can just not take the honeymoon. you were the general counsel for the department of defense. what advice would you have given in that situation? i certainly wouldn t have been flying on a government plane for my vacation. no question about it. i think we need to look at the laws that govern our people in top jobs and we need to have laws that contribute to the safety of america but that protect the american taxpayer and that should apply to president trump as much as to his cabinet. there is another story today about the swamp that really pulled me over. the acting director of the office of government ethics, the trump ethics watchdog moves to allow anonymous gifts to defense funds. this is a move to allow
da m ethics from day one of this administration. they did withdraw the request, one has to note but the thought i had was if it going to cost $25,000 an hour for you to work to fly around for your honeymoon, you can just not take the honeymoon. you were the general counsel for the department of defense. what advice would you have given in that situation? i certainly wouldn t have been flying on a government plane for my vacation. no question about it. i think we need to look at the laws that govern our people in top jobs and we need to have laws that contribute to the safety of america but that protect the american taxpayer and that should apply to president trump as much as to his cabinet. there is another story today about the swamp that really pulled me over. the acting director of the office of government ethics, the trump ethics watchdog moves to allow anonymous gifts to defense
of taking that opinion down. if we think back to 1993, the opinion wasn t on the web page, it was in books. it wasn t easy to take it down, but there weren t any legal defense funds or there weren t significant numbers of legal defense funds they had to set up in the bush administration which actually valued government ethics and as a result they never got around to changing it. i became aware in 2016 that that opinion was still on our web page and suggested we take it down. my staff persuaded me that as a matter of historical record and transparency it made it okay to leave it up. i told them to issue a new opinion. i wanted it done before the election. i imagined before the beginning of the election there would be a need for a legal defense fund. they didn t get it done. the transition is the presidential transition is an all encompassing activity for oge.
this internal policy which prohibited, i just explained to people watching, prohibited anonymous donations from lobbyists to white house staffers who have the legal defense funds. it s a movement that could help people in the administration caught up in the russia probe to pay for attorneys. you, sir, ordered a review of this law before the election. what s your response to the news today? first of all, i have no problem with people setting up legal defense funds. it s very hard to be a public official. if they need some help, that s one thing. you have to do it carefully and you have to follow the rules. oge issued an ill-advised opinion saying it was okay to get anonymous donations as a way to deal with the ethics problems. within months oge realized that was a mistake, late 1993. by 1994 oge was telling people do not accept anonymous donations. now 00 ge didn t do a good job