Head of Ethicks Office is Obama donor, now concerned

Posted: Jan 16, 2017

Director of the Office of Government Ethics Walter M. Shaub donated to President Obama before his appointment and defended Hillary Clinton’s decision to not disclose paid speeches to the Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of state. A timeline compiled by the PAC America Rising of Shaub’s service at the ethics office revealed Shaub donated to Obama before his appointment in January 2013, and has a record of defending Hillary Clinton when she was a presidential candidate from ethics concerns. Shaub said it was satisfactory to not disclose the speeches—which totaled $26.4 million to the Clinton Foundation from corporations, foreign donations, and universities—because Bill Clinton was acting as an “agent” for a charity. The speeches included $500,000 Bill Clinton received for remarks before a Kremlin-tied investment bank in Moscow in 2010, while the Russians were negotiating to acquire a uranium company full of Clinton Foundation donors. The Uranium One deal was signed off by Hillary Clinton’s State Department, giving Russia control of 20 percent of uranium production capacity in the United States. Several ethics lawyers said Clinton’s failure to detail the paid speeches ran afoul of disclosure rules and the ethics agreement between the Obama administration and the Clinton Foundation to disclose foreign donations to avoid conflicts of interests. However, the “ethics mavens at the Office of Government Ethics,” run by Shaub, said the speeches were fine. Shaub now says he has “great concern” over the speed of the confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominees, sending a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and leftwing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), but fails to cite the speed of Cabinet confirmations was quick in 2009, as the Senate confirmed seven Cabinet nominees on President Obama’s inauguration day, with one exception. ;