United States Office of Government Ethics
The United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE) is an independent agency within the executive branch of the U.S. Federal Government which is responsible for directing executive branch policies relating to the prevention of conflicts of interest on the part of Federal executive branch officers and employees. Primary duties include the following:
- Establishing the executive branch standards of conduct;
- Issuing rules and regulations interpreting the criminal conflict of interest restrictions;
- Establishing the framework for the public and confidential financial disclosure systems for executive branch employees;
- Developing training and education programs for use by executive branch ethics officials and employees;
- Ensuring that individual agency ethics programs are functioning properly by setting the requirements for them, supporting them, and reviewing them.
The Director of OGE is appointed by the President after confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The Director of OGE serves a five-year term, thereby overlapping presidential terms, and is subject to no term limit. The rest of the OGE employees are career civil servants. Created by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, OGE separated from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in 1989 pursuant to reform legislation.[1]
Trump conflicts of interest
A series of tweets on 30 November 2016 from the office's official Twitter account loudly praised President-elect Donald Trump for planning to divest his business holdings in order to resolve potential conflicts of interest, following an announcement where Trump reaffirmed his intent to take himself out of business operations, despite him having made no firm commitment to a divestment like selling his businesses or a blind trust. A number of observers speculated that the office's account might have been hacked, a suggestion it later denied.[2] The New York Times suggested that the apparent misunderstanding behind the postings were deliberately intended to reveal the independent agency had advised Trump's legal counsel that a divestment was the only adequate remedy for resolving any conflict, and, by extension, pressure Trump into doing so.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ Pan, Jock (2010). The United States Outer executive Departments and Independent Federal Agencies. Xlibris Corporation. pp. 346–7. ISBN 9781450086752. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
- ↑ Selyukh, Alina (30 November 2016). "Trump's Conflict of Interest Gets Twitter Response From Government Watchdog : The Two-Way : NPR". NPR. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
- ↑ Shear, Michael D.; Lipton, Eric (November 30, 2016). "Ethics Office Praises Donald Trump for a Move He Hasn't Committed To". New York Times. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
External links
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- "United States Office of Government Ethics". Retrieved Sep 17, 2012.