Trump rescinds lobbyists measure
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order early Wednesday that had limited federal administration officials from lobbying the government or working for foreign countries after they leave their posts.
Trump had signed the now-reversed executive order in an Oval Office ceremony in January 2017.
“Most of the people standing behind me will not be able to go to work” after they leave government, Trump said at the time, flanked by senior aides.
The order required executive branch appointees to sign a pledge that they would never work as registered foreign lobbyists, and it banned them from lobbying the federal agencies where they worked for five years after leaving the government.
Ethics experts at the time noted that the order had loopholes — but still offered cautious praise for Trump’s attempt at halting the revolving door that allows government employees to use their positions to land lucrative jobs in the private sector.
No explanation was given for why Trump chose to rescind the order. The White House released the directive at 1:08 a.m. on the day he left office. It had been signed Tuesday.
“The revocation of the 5-year lobbying ban for presidential appointees is the perfect coda for the most corrupt administration in American history,” Robert Weissman, president of the group Public Citizen, said in a statement.
Trump largely failed to fulfill the pledges he made to change Washington’s culture, including the specific promises he made to curtail moneyed interests in a 2016 campaign speech in Green Bay, Wis.
He promised he would push Congress to pass a fiveyear lobbying ban into law so it could not be lifted by a future president. But he never proposed such legislation. Nor did he ask Congress to impose a similar five-year lobbying ban on its members, as he had promised he would do in the speech.
He also never tried to seek to “close all the loopholes” used by former government officials who get around registering as lobbyists by calling themselves “consultants” and “advisers.” And he never acted on his pledge to stop foreign lobbyists from campaign fundraising.