GOP Will Ram Through Ethically Challenged Cabinet Nominees Before Legal Vetting Ends

What do you do when you have a whole slew of ethically challenged nominees to hold cabinet positions in your government? If you are Republicans and Mitch McConnell, you destroy another democratic norm and rush through Senate hearings to confirm these nominees virtually all at once and dispense with the normal financial disclosure and ethics reviews required by law. The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) had not finished their review of most of Trump’s nominees as required by Ethics in Government Act of 1978. Four of Trump’s nominees, Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, Michael Kelly, and Wilbur Ross, have not even filed their financial disclosure forms yet. Others have submitted incomplete answers to the questionnaires required by the respective committees vetting them. Mitch McConnell’s response to all this is that they can provide all this missing information at a later date as long as it is before the full vote in the Senate on those nominations. Of course, that limits the information that Democrats would actually have to question the nominees in these committee hearings and you can be sure there will be no answers forthcoming from any of the nominees once the full Senate is scheduled to vote on their nominations. It is, once again, another in a long line of acts that are destroying the norms of governance orchestrated by McConnell and the GOP.

Let’s take a look at some of what we know about a few of these nominees. Let’s start off with Tuesday’s “star”, Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Sessions has had a long history of racist rhetoric and actions and was denied a judgeship by his peers in the Senate in 1986. In his original questionnaire response, Sessions ignored this rejection as well as severely underreporting hundreds of speeches and interviews he gave, some of which were easily found via a Google search. Sessions then amended his response. Then it was pointed out that he had listed four civil rights cases in which he had really had no role other than being the Attorney General of Alabama at the time as some of his most significant accomplishments. Again, Sessions had to amend his response to the questionnaire. So, before he has even passed muster from the Judiciary Committee, Session has already been brazenly caught lying at least twice. This sounds like a good standard for Trump’s Attorney General.

Next up, let’s look at Rex Tillerson. Of course his close connections to Vladimir Putin and desire to lift the sanctions so that Exxon can drill more oil in Russia might be a little disturbing to most patriotic Americans, while the fact that he still has a huge pile of unvested Exxon stock that could be worth a fortune if Exxon could drill in Russia might concern those Putin-loving Republicans who voted for Trump. But I doubt it. More troubling is Tillerson’s direct refusal to accede to State Department requests not to negotiate an oil deal with the Kurds in an attempt to force the Iraqi government to share oil revenue with all areas of the country in the aftermath of the Bush war in Iraq. Tillerson refused and signed a deal for Exxon with the Kurdish authorities in Northern Iraq which ultimately helped lead to a virtual civil war in Iraq. The result of that war still lives with us today in the form of ISIS. Tillerson’s treasonous act makes him a perfect candidate for Trump’s Secretary of State.

Next up is our latest favorite Goldman banker, Steve Mnuchin. As an aside, what kind of corporate culture exists at the vampire squid that creates guys like Steve Bannon, Steve Mnuchin, and Gary Cohn. Mnuchin was the CEO of OneWest, the company that illegally foreclosed on thousands of homeowners, forged and back-dated thousands of documents, and illegally stole homes from the legal owner of those residences. In addition, Mnuchin used his private foundation to astroturf support for OneWest’s merger with CIT, a deal that paid  Mnuchin $11 million when it was consummated. This guy knows how to steal big-time so he’s a stellar candidate for Trump’s Treasury Secretary.

Tom Price, up for head of Health and Human Services, at least has some Congressional experience dealing with health insurance and related issues. Of course, besides his desire to repeal Obamacare and possible privatize Medicare, Price also apparently dabbles in the stock market. Documents have shown that Price executed hundreds of transactions worth at least $300,000 in at least 40 healthcare related companies while he was head of the House Budget Committee and that committee was working on legislation that directly effected those companies. As far as I know, the details of these transaction have not been released but it is certainly a real possibility that these trades violated the STOCK Act which forbids a member of Congress from benefitting from inside information the member might have gleaned from potential legislation. Here’s a guy who knows how to make money off of healthcare and so he should be able to figure out a way to take health insurance from up to 30 million Americans and pass those savings on to millionaire’s like himself and Trump in the form of a tax cut for the rich.

Betsy Devos, nominee for Secretary of Education, is the billionaire’s daughter who married into the family that owns Amway, the apparently legal pyramid scheme, or should I say multi-level marketing company. Devos has spent her “philanthropic” life trying to destroy public education and use those tax dollars to fund voucher systems and private, charter schools. Part of that effort involved creating the All Children Matter Political Action Committee that was pushing for a school voucher plan in Ohio and DeVos’s PAC asked for a ruling on how much they were legally able to spend to support that effort. The Ohio Elections Commission ruled that the legal limit was $10,000. DeVos received that ruling and promptly decided to spend $870,000 supporting the voucher plan by funneling money through the PAC’s Virginia chapter. Devos merely broke the legal spending limit by $860,000 and this was AFTER she had received a specific ruling on the matter. DeVos compounded that problem by refusing to pay the $5.2 million fine when the PAC’s illegal spending was uncovered. That delay added another $100,000 in late fees to the fine. Whereupon DeVos dissolved the PAC and refused to pay the fine at all because the entity no longer existed. The fine is still outstanding. And illegal campaign spending and refusing to pay what is owed makes DeVos an outstanding candidate for Trump’s Secretary of Education.

Let’s wrap up with Andy Puzder, the nominee for Secretary of Labor. His approach to labor seems to be at odds with Donald Trump as Puzder believes that robots make better workers. They will essentially work for free, certainly less than a living minimum wage that Puzder opposes, and you never have to pay them overtime. But then Puzder does not really believe in paying overtime either as his ownership of fast-food giants Carl’s Jr. and Hardees under the parent company CKE Holdings attests. According to a recent Bloomberg study, around 60% of the Department of Labor investigations of CKE Holdings entities have resulted in at least one violation of federal labor law. Because Carl’s Jr. and Hardees are run as franchises, Puzder and CKE manage to avoid any responsibility for these violations. But Puzder does have a few things in common with Trump. He is apparently a domestic abuser who has had run-ins with the police at least three times concerning domestic violence. He is also a man who is comfortable objectifying women and believes that selling burgers with scantily-clad women is American as apple pie.

That’s a pretty impressive list of ethically challenged nominees. And I haven’t even touched on those nominees whose views are totally antithetical to the departments they will be running. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats on those committees must do everything in their power and more to delay and disrupt these hearings. They must use every parliamentary trick in the book. They must walk out of hearings and not allow a quorum to hold the hearing. They must object to every question to a nominee who has not completed the review by the OGE. And whatever else they can think of. By no means should any Democrat on these committees vote to support any of these nominees. Unanimity is key if Democrats really want to become an effective opposition. If we have learned anything from the last eight years, it surely is that. If devising a sleepover is the best that Chuck Schumer can come up with, we are surely doomed.