By Michael Kranish and Abby Phillip:
Key disclosure reports for four out of nine of Donald Trump’s nominees subject to Senate confirmation hearings this week had yet to be made public by late Monday, underscoring concerns from the Office of Government Ethics that it is being rushed to approve the documentation.
The first nomination hearing is slated for Tuesday, for attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, whose ethics report has been completed. But paperwork for some other nominees was not available. For example, the ethics report had yet to be made public for Betsy DeVos, the billionaire who is slated to head the Department of Education. Devos’s confirmation hearing was originally set for Wednesday, but was postponed on Monday night to Jan. 17.
Even if all the reports are released just before the hearings, some ethics specialists said the process is too hurried for the public and senators to evaluate the information. The reports focus on potential financial conflicts of interest and agreements to divest certain holdings.
“The whole point of ventilating this stuff is to enable the American people and senators to ask questions of the nominee about how you are going to address conflicts,” said Norman Eisen, who served as an ethics lawyer in the Obama administration. Eisen cited a letter written in February 2009 by then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that called on the Obama administration to promptly provide all ethics disclosure material “in time for review and prior to a committee hearing.”
The Full Story (January 9, 2017)
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