Ethics official warns against confirmations before reviews are complete

A top ethics official warned Saturday that plans to confirm Donald Trump’s top Cabinet choices before background examinations are complete are unprecedented and have overwhelmed government investigators responsible for the reviews.

The concerns came on the eve of the Trump administration-in-waiting’s first big test, with as many as seven nominees for Cabinet positions - many of them already the subject of questions about their qualifications - scheduled to visit Capitol Hill in the coming days for confirmation hearings.

The process begins Tuesday, when Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump’s controversial nominee for attorney general, will begin two days of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the big show is Wednesday, when five hearings are scheduled, bringing a marathon of nationally televised scrutiny to the thin public records and vast wealth of many of Trump’s Cabinet picks.

Democrats have vowed to cast the pageant of hearings as a proxy test of Trump himself, in hopes of discrediting his new government before it begins. They hope to remind the public of the president-elect’s own lack of government experience and reluctance to separate himself from an entanglement of global business interests while he leads the nation.

But even Democrats acknowledge that Trump’s slate of Cabinet officials will probably sail through. The packed schedule, similar to those for nominees of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the Trump team. In addition, Trump has scheduled a news conference Wednesday morning that will overlap with several hearings, at which he has promised to talk about separating his presidency from his business interests.

Whether the schedule holds in the coming days is unclear. McConnell’s office declined on Saturday to respond to warnings by Walter Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, who said the current confirmation calendar is “of great concern to me” because nominees have not completed a required ethics review before their hearings.

The schedule “has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews,” Shaub wrote in response to an inquiry by Democratic senators. “More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings.”

Shaub added: “I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process.”

Republican aides have disputed that notion, saying that in some cases, nominees of both parties have sat for hearings before the paperwork process was completed.

The OGE enforces federal ethics rules and reviews potential conflicts of interest for nominees to government posts. Shaub, a lawyer and political appointee of President Obama, took over the office in 2013. He donated a total of $500 to Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, federal elections records show.

Ethics experts from both political parties expressed dismay at the possibility that confirmation hearings would proceed before the OGE reviews were completed.

“This is unprecedented,” said Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who has served as counsel to several Republican presidential candidates and Cabinet nominees in the past. “This suggests that there has been a real breakdown between the transition and the Office of Government Ethics.”

Much of the attention this week is expected to focus on Sessions and his controversial record on civil rights, and on ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, who has never served in the public sector.

Tillerson will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday. The Senate’s health and education panel, meanwhile, is set to consider billionaire power broker Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for education secretary, while the Senate Intelligence Committee will review the nomination of Rep. Mike Pompeo, RKan., Trump’s nominee for CIA director.

On Tuesday, in addition to Sessions, retired Marine general John Kelly will testify at a Homeland Security committee hearing to review his nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security. And Elaine Chao - a former secretary of labor who is married to McConnell - is set to appear before the Commerce Committee Wednesday to discuss her choice as transportation secretary.

“All the president-elect’s Cabinet appointments will be confirmed,” McConnell vowed last Wednesday as he called on Democrats to not delay votes on Trump’s less controversial choices for national security posts, including Kelly and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, the nominee for secretary of defense.

“Basically, they can delay the process. They can’t stop it,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., said of his Democratic colleagues.

Republicans said they’re proceeding quickly in hopes of confirming a handful of Trump picks on Inauguration Day, as happened eight years ago, when seven of Obama’s Cabinet nominees were confirmed unanimously on his first day in office.

But Democrats said Obama’s nominations moved quickly because nominees had submitted requisite paperwork by early January. On Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Shaub’s warning “makes crystal-clear that the transition team’s collusion with Senate Republicans to jam through these Cabinet nominees before they’ve been thoroughly vetted is unprecedented.”

Sen. Patty Murray, DWash., said that Trump “ran his campaign telling people he was about jobs and workers. Many of these nominees don’t share that view. Our responsibility is to make sure that we know what we are buying and the country knows what they bought.”

Sen. Richard Durbin, DIll., said: “We’re dealing with more billionaires than we’ve ever seen in one place in this Trump Cabinet. It creates a special challenge.”

Democrats said they plan to focus intently on nominees’ business interests and financial disclosures. Several nominees, including DeVos and other picks not yet scheduled for hearings, are likely to be grilled over past statements in support of dismantling portions of the departments they’ve been tapped to lead.

Kelly, Pompeo, Sessions and Tillerson are the furthest along in responding to written questionnaires and divulging personal and financial information, according to Senate aides. But reviews by the FBI and OGE are still underway for most nominees, according to the aides, who are tracking the process but not authorized to speak publicly about details. Sessions’s FBI check is complete, but other nominees have yet to complete all of the paperwork required by committees, because the FBI and OGE reviews continue, the aides said.