WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� took office eight years ago, pledging to 鈥渄rain the swamp鈥� and end the domination of Washington influence peddlers.
Now, he鈥檚 opening his second term by rolling back on executive branch employees accepting major gifts from lobbyists, and ditching bans on lobbyists seeking executive branch jobs or vice versa, for at least two years.
Trump issued a Day 1 that rescinded one on ethics that former President signed when he took office in January 2021.
The new president also has been benefitting personally in the runup to his inauguration by launching a new token that is soaring in value while his wife, first lady Melania Trump, has inked a deal to make a documentary with Amazon.
All of that comes as the has instituted a that forbids making deals with foreign governments, but not with private companies abroad.
鈥淭rump is opening the floodgates for conflicts of interest and exploiting his power in office in the hopes of making billions of dollars on the backs of taxpayers,鈥� Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the government watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement. 鈥淚nstead of focusing on the needs of the American people, Trump鈥檚 only interest is to secure a next deal to line his pockets.鈥�
That Trump and his family are looking to convert political success into profits is no surprise. While seeking reelection last year, Trump sold gold , and diamond-encrusted .
But it also marks a departure from when Trump began his first term in 2017 and signed an ethics order banning executive branch employees from becoming lobbyists for five years.
Trump current and former members of his administration from those rules in one of his final acts before leaving office in 2020, though. And that mirrored President Bill Clinton instituting stricter ethics rules only to roll them back shortly before he left office.
Trump's promise to eradicate the 鈥渟wamp鈥� of institutional corruption in Washington was a key theme of his 2016 presidential campaign. As a former president seeking to reclaim the White House, it was less of a rallying cry during last year's campaign. But Trump supporters often still broke into chants of 鈥淒rain the Swamp!鈥� when their candidate a term for entrenched government civil servants who have frustrated Trump and his allies.
The White House press office didn't answer questions on Wednesday about whether Trump might have his own ethics rules in the works to replace the Biden-era ones he nullified. Trump himself has in the past criticized the 鈥渞evolving door鈥� of people who move from government positions to posts in government and back.
During a 2022 interview with podcast host Theo Von, Trump said, 鈥淚 was not a big person for lobbyists."
Rob Kelner, chair of the election and political law practice at the firm Covington & Burling, said Trump might sign his own new set of executive actions on ethics. But he also said that the new president might not be anxious to do so given that it could ultimately be redundant. 鈥淭here are already hundreds of pages of ethics laws and rules that govern executive branch employees,鈥� Kelner said.
Kelner said a more immediate impact of Trump scrapping Biden's order might be that it gives former members of the Democratic administration additional employment options by wiping out bans they would have otherwise had to heed.
鈥淎s they're all out looking for jobs, this takes a burden off their shoulders,鈥� Kelner said.
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Will Weissert, The Associated Press
