 Since the start of his second term, President Trump has turned the Office of Government Ethics into a revolving door—with four different directors in 2025 alone! John, this is unprecedented and it's a real liability for government ethics. The director’s five-year term is meant to span presidential administrations, reducing the risk of political pressure on the office. That structure has worked for nearly five decades—until Trump. This is no coincidence: Trump is the most corrupt president in American history and has launched an escalating effort to decriminalize political corruption. The fact that he has gone through multiple OGE heads in a year tells you just how much he cares about government ethics.
Since Trump returned to office, OGE leadership has changed rapidly. In December 2024, the Senate confirmed David Huitema, a respected career ethics official who was supposed to serve through 2029. But in February 2025, Trump abruptly removed him, offering no explanation beyond a short notice on the OGE website.Trump then installed Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, a political ally with no background in ethics, as acting director while Collins continued to run the VA. By April 2025, Collins was replaced by Jamieson Greer, U.S. Trade Representative and a longtime Trump loyalist. Greer was also appointed acting head of the Office of Special Counsel, meaning he held two of the most sensitive oversight roles in the federal government while also advising the president on the global trade war he had recently launched. In August 2025, Trump appointed Eric Ueland, a senior OMB political appointee, to simultaneously serve as acting director of OGE. This kind of rapid turnover has never happened in the office's history. Trump’s meddling turns an agency meant to be apolitical into a tool that erodes its independence. OGE sets ethics rules, reviews financial disclosures, advises agency ethics officials and safeguards executive branch integrity. These duties demand neutrality and distance from politics. But placing acting directors with political or agency roles creates conflicts. They may oversee rules affecting their own finances, staff, agencies or allies—precisely the scenario OGE exists to prevent. That overlap makes it nearly impossible for the public to trust that OGE’s decisions are free from self-dealing. This raises the stakes of every ethics decision OGE makes moving forward. If officials fear political blowback, they may hesitate to challenge misconduct or insist on stronger safeguards. If acting directors are beholden to the president for their continued employment, the impartiality of their decisions becomes suspect. A system that relies on independence cannot survive if independence is treated as optional. And the administration’s minimal communication about these leadership changes symbolizes a broader disregard for transparency in an office whose mission centers on it. At a moment when public trust in the government is at a historic low, the politicization of the OGE threatens one of the executive branch’s most essential guardrails. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your tax-deductible donation will go through immediately to ActBlue Charities Inc. and be disbursed to CREW within 30 days:
Thank you, CREW HQ |
||||||||||||||||||||
|