Latest news with #NormEisen
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
With crashout over Trump, Musk's government conflicts become awkward entanglements
Norm Eisen, former White House ethics czar, shares an exclusive look at a new report from the Democracy Defenders Fund entitled, "Cut to Shreds: How Elon Musk Profited White Decimating the U.S. Government," and discusses new questions raised about Musk's government contracts in light of his fight with Donald Trump.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Can Trump ban international students from Harvard?
Former White House Ethics Czar Norm Eisen and former acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli join NewsNation to discuss the Trump administration's decision to revoke Harvard University's ability to enroll international students. The Department of Homeland Security says Harvard created an unsafe environment by allowing 'anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators' to target Jewish students. It also accuses the university of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party and training a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024. Thousands of international students may now be forced to leave or transfer. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Want To Know Who's Putting Millions In Trump's Pocket To Buy Access? Too Bad. It's None Of Your Business.
WASHINGTON — Want to know who, exactly, is putting millions of dollars, even tens of millions, directly into Donald Trump's pocket through his 'meme' crypto coins, and what they want in return? Or whether his trip to the United Arab Emirates this week will include a visit with the state-backed firm that plans on using $2 billion of his 'stable' coin? Well, too bad. According to the White House, none of that is any of your business. It truly is astounding, watching in real time as the president of the United States openly uses his office to enrich himself — the very definition of corruption — the way a third-world dictator might and, at least thus far, get away with it. 'It's like the government is for sale,' said Norm Eisen, the top ethics lawyer in the Obama White House. 'Trump is acting like some kind of a corrupt pirate or a medieval potentate.' One reason why Trump's blatant profiteering may be failing to gain traction is a widespread notion — one pushed by a lot of progressives — that Trump is doing nothing more than politicians have done for ages, that they're all corrupt, that the whole system is corrupt, and so on. They could not be more wrong. Full-on, cash-into-public-officials'-wallets corruption is actually rare in this country. What many people think of as political 'corruption' is our system of financing campaigns, how those with money get access to candidates and elected officials. There is absolutely merit to this, particularly when it comes to groups that can accept contributions of unlimited size but never have to disclose the names of their donors. What Trump is doing, however, is a difference of kind, not just degree. Donations to campaigns, to super PACs, to nonprofit 'issue' advocacy groups — all of this is to influence who gets elected to office. All that money is spent on campaigns. (And putting any of that money to personal use is a crime, as politicians who have been charged and convicted can attest.) The secret buyers of Trump's coins hoping to win an audience with him at his Virginia golf resort in two weeks, in contrast, are not contributing to any campaign. They are contributing to his personal bank account. Same with that Emirati firm, MGX. There is zero precedent for this in the American presidency over at least the last century, with the exception of Trump's first term. During those four years, he raked in millions from foreign and domestic interest groups and Republican candidates and parties who spent freely at his hotels and resorts. This included official delegations from other countries that would reserve whole blocks of rooms at his hotel just five blocks from the White House. After his November win, Trump hit upon a scheme that requires none of the costs of owning and running a hotel or golf resort and will potentially bring him far, far more cash. Trump announced his '$TRUMP' coin three days before re-taking office. His family's 'World Liberty Financial' brokerage announced its 'stable' crypto coin — stable because it is tied to the United States dollar through the instruments that back it — in March. How much, precisely, Trump earns from these enterprises is impossible to determine from public records because crypto is largely unregulated and, thanks to Trump, will not even be scrutinized by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That Trump cares deeply about the success of these ventures, though, is obvious from his actions. He has repeatedly promoted his meme coin — which has zero intrinsic value — on social media, and last week even promoted the contest whose winners will earn the right to interact with him in small group settings on May 22. HuffPost specifically asked several White House officials detailed questions about Trump's involvement in his crypto ventures. They all declined to answer and instead referred to press secretary Karoline Leavitt's statements at Friday's briefing. 'It's frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,' she said. 'The president is abiding by all conflict-of-interest laws.' And that is the inside joke about all of this. The federal conflict-of-interest laws specifically do not apply to the president. Indeed, even suggesting that what Trump is doing is a 'conflict of interest' — which is the way many journalists and other observers are describing it — wildly misses the mark. When Jimmy Carter's Department of Agriculture wrote and enforced regulations regarding peanut farming, that was a potential conflict of interest. What Trump is doing is a completely different animal. He unabashedly created businesses that specifically use the fact that he is president to make money. How much interest would there be in a Trump 'meme' coin if he were a former president living quietly in his Palm Beach country club? What are the chances of an Emirati business using $2 billion of Trump's 'stable' coin for a transaction if Trump wasn't in the White House? And that leads to the crux of the matter. Our institutions were not designed for someone like this, someone with no evident interest in distinguishing right from wrong. We elected an amoral convicted criminal who had previously attempted a self-coup after losing reelection. Who had defied a judicial subpoena to hand over documents containing state secrets that he was keeping at his residence. Who had been found civilly liable by one jury of sexual abuse, and by another of massive and ongoing business fraud. The drafters of the Constitution clearly never imagined that such a person could rise to prominence, and therefore failed to create the necessary guardrails to keep him out of office. What's our excuse?
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Norm Eisen: New polls show ‘Trump has lost the first 100 days'
As we approach the first 100 days of Trump's second term, his administration has eroded constitutional norms and expanded executive power more than ever before. Norm Eisen joins The Weekend to discuss.
Los Angeles Times
11-02-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
With firings and lax enforcement, Trump moving to dismantle government's public integrity guardrails
WASHINGTON — In the first three weeks of his administration, President Trump has moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government's public integrity guardrails that he frequently tested during his first term but now seems intent on removing entirely. In a span of hours on Monday, word came that he had forced out leaders of offices responsible for government ethics and whistleblower complaints. And in a boon to corporations, he ordered a pause to enforcement of a decades-old law that prohibits American companies from bribing foreign governments to win business. All of that came on top of the earlier late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general who are tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at government agencies. It's all being done with a stop-me-if-you-dare defiance by a president who the first time around felt hemmed in by watchdogs, lawyers and judges tasked with affirming good government and fair play. Now, he seems determined to break those constraints once and for all in a historically unprecedented flex of executive power. 'It's the most corrupt start that we've ever seen in the history of the American presidency,' said Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic who was a legal advisor to Democrats during Trump's first impeachment. 'The end goal is to avoid accountability this time,' said Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer. 'Not just being protected by his party and counting on the public to move on when scandals or problems emerge, but this time by actually removing many of the key figures whose job it is to oversee' his administration. Zelizer added: 'It's a much bolder assertion than in his first term, and if successful and if all these figures are removed, you'll have a combination of an executive branch lacking independent voices that will keep their eye on the ball and then a congressional majority that at least thus far isn't really going to cause problems for him.' To some degree, Trump's early actions reflect a continuation of the path he blazed in his first term, when he dismissed multiple key inspectors general — including those leading the Defense Department and intelligence community — and fired an FBI director and an attorney general amid a Justice Department investigation into ties between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. This time, though, his administration has moved much more swiftly in reprisal against those he feels previously wronged him — or still could. His Justice Department last month fired more than a dozen prosecutors involved in investigations into his hoarding of classified documents and his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election, both of which resulted in since-abandoned indictments after he left office. It's also demanded a list of all agents who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, with Trump saying Friday that he intends to quickly and 'surgically' fire some of them. The actions reflect the administration's intent to keep a tight grip on the Justice Department and even purge it of investigators seen as insufficiently loyal, even though career civil servants are typically not replaced by new presidents. Trump's actions are in keeping with the dramatic dismissal on his first Friday night in office of nearly 20 inspectors general in a broad cross-section of government agencies, all in seeming violation of a law requiring that Congress be given 30-day advance notice of such firings. The latest moves came Monday, when the recently fired head of the Office of Special Counsel, which processes whistleblower complaints and handles the Hatch Act that prohibits federal employees from partisan activities on the job, sued over his dismissal days earlier. Trump separately fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics. He named as acting head of the watchdog agencies Doug Collins, a loyal ally and former Republican congressman from Georgia who was recently confirmed as secretary of Veterans Affairs. But late Monday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the fired head, Hampton Dellinger, to be reinstated while a court fight continues over his removal. Trump's administration on Monday also moved to wipe away two high-profile public integrity cases of elected officials. Trump pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on political corruption charges that included seeking to sell an appointment to then-President Obama's former Senate seat. Hours later, Trump's Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of accepting bribes of free or discounted travel and illegal campaign contributions. 'I think Trump has sent an unmistakable message that corruption is welcome in his new administration,' said Eisen, who now works with State Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit watchdog group that says it fights 'election sabotage and autocracy,' and has been filing lawsuits against Trump's administration. Trump has portrayed the cases the same way he labeled his own investigations: as politically motivated witch hunts. Trump, who in 2016 campaigned on a pledge to rid Washington of corruption with his 'drain the swamp' refrain, has also taken aim at ethics and watchdog rules when it comes to business. On Monday, he paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prevents U.S. companies from paying bribes to foreign government officials to win business, until new Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi can design new guidance. The White House said the action was needed because American companies 'are prohibited from engaging in practices common among international competitors, creating an uneven playing field.' 'It sounds good on paper but in practicality it's a disaster,' Trump said at the White House. On his first day in office last month, Trump signed an executive order that rescinded one issued by former President Biden that had prohibited executive branch employees from accepting major gifts from lobbyists and bans people jumping from lobbying jobs to executive branch jobs, or the reverse, for two years. The bans were aimed at curbing the 'revolving door' in Washington, where incoming government workers could bring a minefield of ethical conflicts and later find lucrative lobbying jobs. The move came as Trump returned to power with fresh overlaps between his personal and business interests, including his launch of a new cryptocurrency token. His family business, the Trump Organization, meanwhile, adopted a voluntary agreement that bars it from making deals with foreign governments but not with private companies abroad, a significant change from the company's ethics pact in the first term. The Trump Organization has in recent months struck deals for hotels and golf resorts in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Government ethics experts have raised concerns that the president's personal financial interests in the deals could influence the way he conducts foreign policy. Tucker, Price and Miller write for the Associated Press. Price reported from New York.
