POLITICO Influence Newsletter
By Caitlin Oprysko
KHANNA MOVES TO RESTORE ETHICS GUARDRAILS: A new bill from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) would restore some ethics restrictions on White House officials that Trump revoked on his first day in office, which freed appointees of former President Joe Biden to quickly land cushy lobbying jobs.
— In a speech on the House floor this morning, Khanna said his bill — the Drain the Swamp Act — would bar White House officials from becoming lobbyists during Trump’s second term in addition to reviving a lobbyist gift ban for White House officials.
— Trump “campaigned around the country to drain the swamp, yet one of the first things he did is reverse President Biden’s executive order that banned White House officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists,” Khanna said.
— Trump has yet to issue an ethics pledge for his new administration, despite decrying the pipeline of government officials joining the influence industry during his latest campaign. Trump has also stocked his administration with around a dozen former lobbyists, all the while ousting agency inspectors general tasked with rooting out corruption as well as the government’s top ethics watchdog.
— Khanna argued that his bill would help Trump “fulfill his promise” and maintained that it should draw support “not just from progressives, not just from independents, but from the MAGA movement.”
— But the devil is in the details, and though further specifics about the revolving door restrictions in Khanna’s bill were unknown as of press time, as described, they still wouldn’t go as far as the Biden-era limitations repealed by Trump last month as well as the ethics pledge he required his appointees to sign during his first term.
— Both of those would have barred at least some appointees from becoming lobbyists for a period of time after the end of the administration in which they worked, among other restrictions on so-called shadow lobbying and accepting gifts from lobbyists. Trump rescinded his first ethics pledge on the last day of his first administration.