At least three former Trump administration officials have reportedly said they never signed the president’s ethics pledge.
Robert Wasinger, who was a part of the Trump campaign and transition teams before briefly serving as White House liaison to the State Department, registered last week as a lobbyist for Verizon and Inovio Pharmaceuticals, according to documents online. He is employed as senior vice president of federal public affairs for McGuireWoods Consulting.
During the campaign, Trump’s rallied around a call to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C., and on Jan. 28 he signed an executive order requiring administration officials to sign off on a lobbying freeze after leaving. The order not only bars officials from lobbying for five years after leaving the administration, but also bans them from lobbying for a foreign government for the rest of their lives.
Wasinger told the Washington Post that the executive order came near the end of his tenure and that he never signed the ethics pledge.
The revelation about Wasinger follows reporting, led by the Daily Beast, about former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn not signing the pledge either.
Justin Elliot of ProPublica also pointed out on Twitter that former Housing and Urban Development official Shermichael Singleton told him that “he *also* didn’t sign ‘mandatory’ Trump ethics pledge.”
Norman Eisen, chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama, said appointees “flouting” Trump’s executive order is problematic, according to the Post.
“An ethics executive order is only as good as the desire to enforce it,” Eisen said. “If the president is serious about draining the swamp, he will do something about his appointees who are flouting his order. To have people ride the revolving door so quickly is not draining the swamp.”
