Speaker 1: Well, I was time for our daily Bloomberg Lab Brief,
Speaker 1: exploring legal issues in the news. And today, Bloomberg Law
Speaker 1: host Greg Store speaks with Walter's Shops, senior director of
Speaker 1: ethics at the Campaign Legal Center and former director of
Speaker 1: the U S Office of Government Ethics, about his departure
Speaker 1: from the Trump administration. What sort of great do you
Speaker 1: give this administration on ethics issues? Well, I'm afraid I'd
Speaker 1: have to give them a d teetering into f because
Speaker 1: the tone from the top has trickled down, and you've
Speaker 1: got government officials who seem to continue to advertise other
Speaker 1: people's products or their own products from the government, and
Speaker 1: you've got a White House Council who seems to be
Speaker 1: sending a message to folks that anything goes and as
Speaker 1: long as we can make an argument that it's legal,
Speaker 1: it's okay. And so after I fought a battle with
Speaker 1: them for a month to get some very routine ethics records,
Speaker 1: the White House waivers, I got a hand in my
Speaker 1: hands on those documents and saw that they were unsigned, undated,
Speaker 1: and retroactive. And a retroactive waiver means you think somebody's
Speaker 1: already violated a rule and you're saying to them after
Speaker 1: the fact, it's okay. So when you were the Director
Speaker 1: of GE you were in a rare position. You could
Speaker 1: criticize the administration from the inside or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: from an important government position. Uh, and you could uh
Speaker 1: put some pressure on them to to comply with ethics rules. Um.
Speaker 1: So why did you leave? Well, I truly felt I
Speaker 1: had reached the end of what I could achieve from
Speaker 1: the inside. And I think it wasn't the deciding factor,
Speaker 1: but a factor was when I finally got my hands
Speaker 1: on those waivers I mentioned, and they were unsigned, undated, retroactive,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the Council to the President who issued
Speaker 1: two of them was actually a member of the class
Speaker 1: of the persons he issued them too. So here he's saying,
Speaker 1: I hear by waiver for myself, which is absolutely incredible. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I started feeling like there wasn't more I
Speaker 1: could do, and I started feeling like they were getting
Speaker 1: more clever in their reactions to to O g E
Speaker 1: by sharing less and less information with us, And so
Speaker 1: I felt like leaving the government, I'd be freer to
Speaker 1: speak out about it, and in fact, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: sitting here talking to you if I were still in
Speaker 1: the government, because ultimately in that role, I may have
Speaker 1: been a government watchdog, but my boss was the president,
Speaker 1: and I had to limit how much I was able
Speaker 1: to publicly express my concerns, and so I did them
Speaker 1: through very limited channels. And I have a lot more
Speaker 1: freedom now to talk about some of these issues. And
Speaker 1: that's Walter Shob, Senior director of Ethics at the Campaign
Speaker 1: Legal Center and former director of the U S Office
Speaker 1: of Government Ethics, speaking with Bloomberg Law host Greg Store.
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