The former ethics chief of President Obama warned that the White House staff going through “the loop from influence-peddling operation” is bad for the country.
Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, weighed in on the Biden administration following the announcement that Michael Czin, a Biden-aligned consultancy firm, SKDK would join the White House as a “senior advisor” position.
Czin is the latest hire at SKDK. It was founded by Anita Dunn. Dunn, unlike other presidential appointees due to an ethics loophole, has recently resigned from the Biden administration. She was able to avoid disclosing publicly her personal finances and business interests.
“Personnel is policy, and it’s problematic when that personnel is swinging through the revolving door from influence-peddling operations,” Shaub told Fox News in a Wednesday email. “It’s all the more troubling when they don’t even quit their outside jobs with those outfits.”
“I hope he won’t follow the path that Anita Dunn chose of coming in as a special government employee and accepting a salary below the threshold that triggers the requirement to file a public financial disclosure report, but the fact that he’s only taking a leave of absence is cause for concern that this could be the plan – and if so, the public will have no way to gauge the extent of his conflicts of interest,” Shaub stated. “It’s not optimal.”
Shaub had previously tweeted Wednesday that Czin’s leave of absence from SKDK “doesn’t get him out” of filing a public Disclosure. However, he noted that “coming aboard as a special employee of the government and setting his salary below the threshold at what public disclosure would apply might do it.”
The leave of absence doesn’t get him out of filing a public disclosure, but coming on as a special government employee and setting his pay below the threshold at which public disclosure would apply may do it — and the leave of absence status may suggest that’s happening. Yuck. https://t.co/CfS5PngXyZ
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) November 10, 2021
The ex-White House ethics chief wrote that the “leave of absence status” may indicate that this is happening.
Shaub concluded, “Yuck!”
Shaub has repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for its ethics. Shaub claimed earlier this year that the Biden administration was sending a message to ethics experts through hiring so many relatives from senior White House officials like Jake Sullivan, Steve Ricchetti and Jen Psaki.
“I’m sorry, I know some folks don’t like hearing any criticism of him. But this royally sucks. I’m disgusted,” Shaub wrote in a Twitter thread in June, reacting to an article about the family ties of Biden officials.
“A lot of us worked hard to tee him up to restore ethics to government and believed the promises,” Shaub added, calling the string of family-related hires “a real ‘f*** you’ to us –and government ethics.”
Shaub also criticized the White House for its handling of Hunter Biden’s art sales. He claimed that the White House’s deal with his dealer in art was “absolutely unacceptable.”
“There is simply no way an artist who has never even juried into a community center art fair is going to suddenly show up in New York selling art for half a million a pop,” Shaub said. “Let’s talk about the magnitude of this… That’s $6.5 million going to the president’s son for being the president’s son, not for being an artist and I just think that’s absolutely appalling.”
