U.S. government ethics chief to resign, casting uncertainty over agency
WASHINGTON — Walter M. Shaub Jr., the government’s top ethics watchdog who has repeatedly gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over conflicts of interest, said Thursday that he’s calling it quits.
Shaub’s five-year term as the director of the Office of Government Ethics is not set to expire until January, but with little chance of renewal and an appealing offer in hand from a nonpartisan advocacy group, he said the time is right to leave.
“There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation,” Shaub said in an interview Thursday. “OGE’s recent experiences have made it clear that the ethics program needs to be strengthened.”
His new position, he said, will allow him to advocate freely for such reforms.
In a letter informing President Donald Trump of his decision, Shaub did not offer a specific reason for his departure but extolled “the principle that public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain.” He had not been pressured to resign, he said.
The White House promptly accepted Shaub’s resignation, and Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said Trump would nominate a successor “in short order.”
The impending vacancy is all but certain to raise fears among Democrats and those in the small world of government ethics who see the office under Shaub as a political bulwark against conflicts of interest in the upper echelons of the government. To Trump’s defenders, who have seen Shaub, an Obama appointee, as politically motivated, it is more welcome news.
The intensity of feeling over what is usually an obscure job speaks to the central role ethics have come to play in Trump’s Washington, where the vast holdings of the president and his Cabinet, as well as an influx of advisers from businesses and lobbying firms, have raised a rash of accusations of conflicts of interest.
Shaub, 46, has faced an uncertain future at the agency since Trump took office. In the weeks between the president’s unexpected election victory and his inauguration, Shaub had taken an extraordinary gamble: He advocated very publicly on Twitter, and in a rare public speech, that Trump liquidate his vast business and personal holdings.