By Eric Tucker, Michelle L. Price and Zeke Miller
Washington (AP) – During the first three weeks of his administration, President Donald Trump moved with cheeky haste to dismantle the public integrity railings of the federal government which he frequently tested during his first mandate and now seems determined to remove completely.
In a time, on Monday, the word came that he had forced the leaders of the offices responsible for government ethics and complaints of denunciation. And in a boon to companies, he ordered a break to apply a law of several decades which prohibits American companies from paying bribes to win cases in foreign countries. All this came in addition to the purge of the previous evening of more than a dozen general inspectors who are responsible for rotating waste, fraud and abuses in government agencies.
All of this is done with a contempt-me-si contempt yourself by a president who, the first time, felt hell by childcare dogs, lawyers and judges responsible for asserting good government and a fair play . Now, it seems determined to break these constraints once and for all in a historically unprecedented flexion of the executive power.
“This is the most corrupt beginning that we have ever seen in the history of the American presidency,” said Norm Eisen, a former American ambassador to the Czech Republic who was a legal adviser for Democrats during the first indictment of Trump.
“The final objective is to avoid responsibility this time,” said the presidential historian at Princeton University, Julian Zelizer. “Not only be protected by your party and count on the public to move forward when scandals or problems emerge, but this time by really removing many of the key characters whose work is to supervise” its administration.
Zelizer added: “It is a much more daring assertion than during its first mandate, and in the event of success and if all these figures are deleted, you will have a combination of an executive branch lacking independent voices which will keep the Eye on the ball, then the majority of the congress which, at least so far, will not really cause him problems. »»
To a certain extent, Trump’s first actions reflect a continuation of the path he opened in his first mandate, when he rejected several general general inspectors – including those who direct the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community – and dismissed a director of the FBI and a Attorney General in the midst of a judge investigation of the department on his links between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
This time, however, his administration has evolved much faster in retaliation against those he previously felt himself-or could still.
Last month, his Ministry of Justice dismissed more than a dozen prosecutors involved in two separate surveys – one in his hoarding of classified documents, the other in his efforts to cancel the presidential election of 2020 – which has resulted in abandoned acts since his departure. He also demanded a list of all the agents who participated in surveys related to the riot of January 6, 2021 in the American Capitol, with Trump saying on Friday that he intended to draw quickly and “surgically” some D ‘between them.
Actions reflect the intention of the administration to keep a close grip on the Ministry of Justice and even to purge it of investigators considered insufficiently faithful, even if career civil servants are generally not replaced by new presidents. Trump’s actions comply with the dramatic dismissal during his first Friday evening in the post of nearly 20 general inspectors in a large cut of government organizations, all in violation of a law obliging that the congress receives a prior notice of 30 Shooting days.
The latest moves occurred on Monday, when the head of the recently dismissed special council office, who treats complaints of denunciation and manages the Hatch law which prohibits federal employees of partisan work activities, pursued during his dismissal a few days more early. Trump pulled the head of the government’s ethics office separately.
Trump administration on Monday also suffered two cases of high -level public integrity of elected officials. Trump forgave the former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, who was sentenced for accusations of political corruption which included the search for appointments at the former headquarters of the Senate of Barack Obama, then President. A few hours later, the Trump Ministry of Justice ordered federal prosecutors to withdraw the charges against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who was accused of accepting bribes of travel and travel and Free illegal or reduced illegal campaign.
“I think Trump has sent an unmistakable message that corruption is welcome in his new administration,” said Eisen, who is now working with State Democracy Defenders Fund, a non -profit surveillance group that says he Fight “electoral sabotage and autocracy” and filed a file filed with the prosecution class against the administration of Trump.
“Together, these actions will rationalize all the efforts that he and his administration will make to take advantage of personally, install loyalists and avoid monitoring of corruption and waste,” said Donald Sherman, Executive Director and Chief Advisor to the Group of Good Governments Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “According to all the indications, Trump plans to perform an administration without law and these unprecedented movements are an alarming first step to put these plans in action.”
Trump described cases in the same way that he qualified his own surveys: like hunts with witches with political motivation.
Trump, who campaigned in 2016 in 2016 on a commitment to get rid of the corruption with his refrain “to drain the swamp”, also targeted rules of ethics and custody with regard to business. On Monday, he paused the law on the law on foreign corruption practices, a 1977 law which prevents US companies from paying bribes to representatives of the foreign government to win cases, until The new Attorney General Pam Bondi can design new rules.
The White House said that action was necessary because American companies “are prohibited from engaging in common practices among international competitors, creating an unequal playing field”.
“It sounds well on paper but in practicality, it is a disaster,” Trump told the White House.
On his first day of power last month, Trump signed an executive decree which canceled one published by former President Joe Biden who had prohibited employees of the executive management to accept the main gifts of Lobbyists and prohibited people from lobbying jobs to executive agencies, or conversely, for two years. The prohibitions aimed to brake the “rotating door” in Washington, where incoming government entrants could bring a field of ethical conflict mines and later find lucrative lobbying jobs.
This decision occurred while Trump returned to power with new horses between his personal and commercial interests, including his launch of a new cryptocurrency token.
His family business, the Trump organization,, for its part, adopted a voluntary agreement which prevents it from concluding agreements with foreign governments, but not with private companies abroad, a significant change compared to the pact of the company’s ethics in the first mandate.
The Trump organization has concluded in recent months for hotels and golf stations in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Government’s ethics experts have feared that the president’s personal financial interests in transactions could influence the way he carries out foreign policy.
Price reported in New York.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
