Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the Trump transition team and Senate Republicans of collusion after receiving a letter from the Office of Government Ethics warning that some Cabinet nominees may be pushed through the Senate before being properly vetted.
“The Office of Government Ethics letter 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,” the New York Democrat said in a statement Saturday.
“The Senate and the American people deserve to know that these cabinet nominees have a plan to avoid any conflicts of interest, that they’re working on behalf of the American people and not their own bottom line, and that they plan to fully comply with the law,” Schumer added. “Senate Republicans should heed the advice of this independent office and stop trying to jam through unvetted nominees.”
The OGE is an independent agency tasked with ethics laws and regulations.
In a letter dated Jan. 6, Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub wrote Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Schumer that several of President-elect Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet have not yet completed the ethics review process. Some of Trump’s nominees are already scheduled for confirmation hearings as early as next week.
CNN reported that the nominees in question are Trump’s picks to lead the Homeland Security Department (John Kelly), Education Department (Betsy DeVos), Commerce Department (Wilbur Ross) and Housing and Urban Development (Ben Carson), citing a Senate Democratic source.
Schaub said the delay is “of great concern to me.”
“This schedule has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews,” Schuab wrote. “More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings. 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.”
While Schuab said he is confident the Trump team will help his agency meet a “reasonable timeframe without sacrificing quality,” he said it would be “cause for alarm” if the Senate were to hold confirmation hearings for nominees whose reports OGE has not certified.
A report by NBC News early Saturday showed that Schuab, through emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Request, was frustrated at times for his agency’s struggle to get a hold of the Trump transition to discuss potential conflict and financial disclosure of Trump’s Cabinet picks.
