CNN
Ethics watchdogs rarely mince words about President Donald Trump.
Theyve called him the most corrupt and conflicted president in US history. And since he returned to the White House, theyve watched with horror as he privately dined with wealthy investors for his personal memecoin fund, brazenly accepted a $400 million luxury airplane from Qatar and purged inspectors general from federal agencies.
Adding to their long list of gripes, the presidents company announced Monday that it was launching Trump Mobile, a wireless service with monthly plans and a $499 smartphone, which would be regulated by many of the federal agencies now run by Trump appointees.
That has led to soul-searching among Washington, DCs self-appointed ethics watchdogs at advocacy groups and think tanks, who are wondering how this couldve been prevented. Some have championed liberal causes for years; others arent beholden to either party but are stunned by Trumps sea-change to the ethics landscape.
While they primarily hold Trump responsible for his own actions, theyre increasingly concluding that former President Joe Biden also deserves some of the blame.
The single biggest failure of the Biden administration was that he and Congress didnt pass any post-Watergate-style reforms, said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. President Biden had zero interest in doing that, and congressional Democrats didnt have much interest.
Many of these experts, including Biden allies, say much more couldve been done to get legislation across the finish line when Democrats had unified control in DC. House Democrats passed a landmark ethics and democracy bill in late 2021, but it languished.
It wouldve banned officials from taking foreign money (as Trump has with his memecoin). It wouldve tightened the rules for who can serve as acting leaders at federal agencies (a loophole Trump used to install loyalists). It wouldve protected civil servants from being reclassified and fired (which Trump is trying to do). it wouldve added job protections for inspectors general (Trump summarily fired more than a dozen in January). And it wouldve added transparency to the pardon process (which Trump has wielded to reward allies).
But one former Biden administration official faulted Trump alone.
Blaming Biden when Trump breaches ethical norms is a prime example of the Democratic Partys problem right now, the former Biden administration official told CNN. The suggestion is that the previous administration should have passed more laws? Theyre not following the current ones. The reality is, there is no way to Trump-proof the government.
In response to CNNs questions about Trump breaking ethics norms, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Trump is restoring the integrity of the Executive Branch and claimed Trumps administration is the most transparent in American history.
The Office of Government Ethics didnt respond to requests for comment about how Trump is avoiding conflicts of interests. (In February, Trump fired the Biden-appointed director of the agency, who was confirmed in December by the Senate in a party-line vote.)
The Trump Organization rolled out a new ethics pledge in January. Attorneys for the company said Trump wont be involved in managing his real estate empire, that they wont pursue new deals with foreign governments, and that an outside adviser would review all major deals including deals with foreign businesses that will be allowed to continue.
Trump took these steps voluntarily, to avoid even the appearance of any conflict, the lawyers wrote, even though some federal ethics laws dont apply to the president, and neither federal law nor the United States Constitution prohibits any President from continuing to own, operate and/or manage their businesses while in the White House.
Presidents have limited time and political capital to enact their agenda. Some outside experts said it was clear that Biden prioritized other landmark laws on Covid-19 relief, health care, climate change, infrastructure and gun control instead of ethics reforms.
That should have been the low-hanging fruit for Congress and the president when there was unified control, said Daniel Weiner of the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
Hedtler-Gaudette said that during strategy sessions about reforms, Biden White House officials would often say they were doing their part by promoting a culture of compliance by adhering to ethics laws. But compliance means youre complying with the weak set of laws that are already on the books, Hedtler-Gaudette said, and not improving them.
House Democrats did pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act in December 2021, but the Democratic-run Senate never took action on the legislation. (Ten Republicans wouldve needed to cross party lines to break a filibuster for the Senate to even consider the bill.)
The Biden administration did not put its weight behind that, and those sorts of reforms really need the buy-in of the administration, Weiner said. It shouldve been a priority.
A former Democratic Hill staffer, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said ethics bills fell by the wayside under Biden to make space for more pressing national needs.
We were still in the worst parts of the pandemic. There were a lot of critical, in-your-face issues that needed to be fixed, they said. We had just defeated Trump, and it was difficult for Democrats to wrap their heads around the fact that he could really come back. These ethics bills wouldve moved up the priority list if we had internalized that possibility.
Donald Sherman, the top lawyer at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, a liberal-leaning watchdog group, said Trump has redefined what the mainstream deems acceptable.
Government corruption isnt unique to one political party, Sherman said. But Trump is singular in shifting the Overton window so far, in breaking rules that most people in government could never even imagine breaking, that its impossible to ignore.
CREW calls itself nonpartisan and has filed ethics complaints in the past against top Democrats, including under Biden. But like many good government groups, it has increasingly adopted a staunch anti-Trump posture, as he keeps pushing the limits. In that vein, CREW led the unsuccessful effort to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot based on the Constitutions insurrectionist ban.
These watchdog groups are looking back longingly to when Trumps power was at its nadir.
Trumps approval rating tanked after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. And when Biden was sworn in, Democrats had unified control of Washington for the first time in a decade.
In those early weeks of the Biden era, a bipartisan House majority voted to impeach Trump, and a bipartisan Senate majority supported the effort, though it fell short of the 67 senators needed for conviction.
The period after January 6, in the first years of President Bidens term, was an example of a missed opportunity, Sherman said. This is a glaring moment now, because the corruption of President Trumps first term has predictably escalated.
