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Anonymous
Steve Bannon provided retroactive ethics waiver to run Breitbart on taxpayer dime 2017-06-17 05:54:13 Post No. 149832
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Steve Bannon provided retroactive ethics waiver to run Breitbart on taxpayer dime 2017-06-17 05:54:13 Post No. 149832
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Steve Bannon provided retroactive ethics waiver to run Breitbart on taxpayer dime
Anonymous
2017-06-17 05:54:13
Post No. 149832
[Report]
A White House ethics waiver that allows chief strategist Steve Bannon to talk to his former employer Breitbart News is “problematic,” the top federal ethics official said in a letter Tuesday.
President Donald Trump’s appointees are required to sign an ethics pledge saying they’ll avoid particular matters involving former employees for two years. But the waiver, one of several pertaining to its staff members that the White House released May 31, allows staffers to “participate in communications and meetings with news organizations regarding broad policy matters.”
The unsigned, undated waiver could be applied retroactively -- essentially allowing staff members who violated an ethics pledge to avoid disciplinary action, wrote Walter Shaub, the director of the federal Office of Government Ethics.
Bannon ran Breitbart, a conservative media site, before he joined Trump’s campaign in 2016. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
OGE doesn’t know whether there were any violations of the ethics pledge based on communications with news agencies -- by Bannon or anyone else, Shaub wrote in a June 13 letter responding to inquiries from four Democratic senators. The agency is preparing a full report about waivers Trump’s administration has granted, he said.
“As part of preparing that report, OGE will follow up with the White House and other agencies to request additional information, including whether they are aware of any violations of the ethics pledge,” Shaub wrote.
Overall, federal disclosures show that the Trump administration has issued 14 waivers for White House staff members, along with waivers or partial releases from ethics rules for at least 10 executive-branch officials across five agencies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-14/federal-ethics-chief-calls-waiver-affecting-bannon-problematic
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OGE published the waivers for all the agencies except the White House after Shaub issued a government-wide call for them on April 28. Earlier that month, he had complained to the New York Times that because of a lack of transparency, he had “no idea how many waivers have been issued.”
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letter to democrats requesting info on potential ethics violations
https://oge.gov/web/OGE.nsf/All%20Documents/4CC6A36259C2DF878525813F0051F98D/$FILE/Letter%20from%20OGE%20Director%20W%20Shaub%206-13-17.pdf#page=6
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>>149832
>“participate in communications and meetings with news organizations regarding broad policy matters.”
The real joke here is that an editorial propagandist website like breitfart is in any way shape or form considered a legitimate news organization
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"On taxpayer dime" is really misleading here. Good story, but nobody should be upset at the cost of a few minutes of paperwork to the taxpayer.
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>>149847
Didn't buzzfeed get a press pass under Obama?
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>>149854
So...what you're saying is....
Whatabout Obama?
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>>149848
Taxpayer dime as in he's on government payroll while he uses his job as chief strategist to help run his private news media outlet.
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>>149930
Tell me one time in history the head of a media outlet has been in the president's cabinet and needed an ethics waiver so he could continue to run his media company on the taxpayer dime. One time, jackass.
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>>149932
So you're saying that the president promoting a propagandist outlet is fine so long as this exact situation does not occur? The Bannon thing is shit and he should have to completely remove himself from Breitbart in order to maintain his position.
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what is the point of a government ethics office acting as a watchdog over the executive branch if the president gets retroactive waivers for whatever his staff wants
what can it even do if there's an ethics violation in that case
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>>149935
So you're saying giving new media a press pass is the same as giving the head of a media outlet a cabinet position and an ethics waiver to continue running his media outlet? Are you saying that these two are equivalent? You're being dishonest at this point.
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>>149937
When the new media outlet you give a pass too has proven produce nothing but vapid yellow journalism, then yes they should not be given a pass. Regardless of whether the cabinet is directly profiting off the arrangement is irrelevant, though it certainly does make it more unethical.
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>>149940
Well nobody is arguing about Steve Bannon's press pass.
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>>149942
That is exactly what this whole argument was about. Did you forget that midway through?
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>>149944
Read the thread, faggot. The article too. It's not that long. If it were about Breitbart getting access to the press room, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all and you know it.
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>>149945
I started a side conversation about whether it is fine for any propagandist site to be given a press pass, regardless of which side of the aisle they lean, in response to another anons post. It was always only tangentially related to the article.
I'm sorry if that confuses and angers you.
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>>149832
>ethics waiver
Needs to be Abolished.
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>>149946
You mean you got so angry at being faced with your own hypocrisy that you desperately tried to deflect.
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