Watergate led to new ethical guardrails. Trump is tearing them down. |
Watergate led to new ethical guardrails. Trump is tearing them down.
In August 1974, facing impeachment for obstruction of justice and abuse of power, President Richard Nixon resigned from office. In the decade that followed, Congress created a series of institutional safeguards designed to uphold a basic principle of democratic governance: Those who hold public office, including the president, should serve the public, not themselves.
These reforms were passed by large bipartisan majorities and signed into law by presidents of both parties. The Inspector General Act placed independent watchdogs, intended to survive changes in administrations, inside every major federal agency to root out fraud, waste and abuse and report their findings to agency heads and Congress. The Ethics in Government Act created an office to oversee executive branch ethics programs and prevent financial conflicts of interest. The Civil Service Reform Act strengthened protections for federal government whistleblowers.
Fifty years after Watergate, President Trump has ignored, undercut or torn down almost every one of these guardrails. In the process, he has made conflicts of interest easier to conceal, whistleblowers less likely to come forward, and official misconduct harder to identify, let alone stop.
And, as we have previously indicated, Trump has refused to follow the practice of past presidents, who put their assets in blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest. Instead, he has used his office to help himself and members of his family amass more than $4 billion, with new conflicts of interest surfacing almost daily.
Inspectors general, whom President Jimmy Carter called “perhaps the most important tools in the fight against fraud,” may be the most consequential casualties of Trump’s second........