美国国家公共电台 NPR Exiting Ethics Chief Walter Shaub Calls Trump White House 'A Disappointment'

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

This week, the director of the Office of Government Ethics¹ resigned. Walter Shaub Jr., who has tangled² with the Trump³ administration over potential conflicts of interest, said, there isn't more I could accomplish. And he took a job with the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. He joins us now. Mr. Shaub, welcome to the program.

WALTER SHAUB JR.: Thank you.

SIEGEL: When you say there isn't more you could accomplish, do you mean you've gained as much compliance⁴ with ethics rules as the law guarantees, or the Trump administration just won't comply with the law no matter what you do?

SHAUB JR.: I've made as much of a difference as I can in this job. I don't think there's more that I can do. And I've done what I can to call attention to the things that concern me...

SIEGEL: Yeah.

SHAUB JR.: ...And have used the only resource available to me, which is to just be very public about those concerns.

SIEGEL: Do you wish you could do more?

SHAUB JR.: Yeah, I do, and I think the laws need to be changed, to be strengthened.

SIEGEL: Is Donald Trump or his family profiting from his position as president?

SHAUB JR.: Well, I think the real problem is that there's no way to know. There's no way to know what decisions he's making. Are they motivated by his own financial interests? Are they motivated by his policy goals? And in the past, presidents have resolved conflicts of interest by getting rid of their assets. The mere⁵ fact that he holds them means there's a question mark over almost everything he does, including the decision to frequently go to his own properties, which gives them free advertisements. So...

SIEGEL: You would find those visits violations⁷ of government ethics.

SHAUB JR.: No, and this is sort of a nuanced point that I need to make, and that's that the laws don't apply to the president. The decision by Congress to exclude the president from the primary conflict of interest law was one of necessity because we can't have the president recusing, not participating in matters where we need a president to participate.

But it wasn't a decision that the president's above the law and shouldn't do the same things that the people who work for him have to do. It's a decision of pragmatic necessity. We need him available. And all of our past presidents for the past four decades have understood that it's not a free pass, that it's a matter of necessity. And so they need to do what they can to act as though the laws apply.

SIEGEL: The General Services Administration ruled that Donald Trump's stake in a hotel that's a few blocks from the White House did not violate a lease that expressly excludes elected officials. Did the GSA in that case fail to enforce an obvious ethics violation⁶?

SHAUB JR.: So I am not an expert in government contracting law. To me, I think the language is concerning. It says an elected official shall not partake in the contract. What my point is, though, is we wouldn't even have to be asking that question if he had divested⁸ his interest in that hotel.

SIEGEL: Yeah, yeah. But it's a reminder⁹ as well that the office you directed, the Office of Government Ethics, has a fairly narrow - pretty narrow brief. That is, a case like that, we don't go to your office to appeal the decision of the General Services Administration.

SHAUB JR.: That's right. We don't have enforcement power. One of the features of the existing ethics program that has worked for the past four decades - and I don't believe it's working now - is that there's a compliance structure where we have a limited set of rules that set the bare minimum. And if you violate them, you're either a rule violator or a criminal depending on the nature of the rule you violated.

But we ought to be able to hold government officials to a higher standard than saying, well, at least they're not criminals. And in that vein¹⁰, the ethics program has always had a set of traditions and norms as to what people are going to do even when we're not talking strictly¹¹ about violations. We're talking about abandoning the norms and ethical¹² traditions of the executive branch that have made our ethics program the gold standard in the world until now.

SIEGEL: Well, given that you had experience with the George W. Bush administration and then the Obama administration when you became director, is the behavior of this White House dramatically different from those two White Houses?

SHAUB JR.: I have only good things to say about the ethics program that President Bush ran as well as the ethics program that President Obama ran in the past two administrations. Both were incredibly supportive of the ethics program, and they proved that ethics is not a partisan¹³ issue.

I can only describe my experience with the way they've run their ethics program in the White House right now as one of disappointment, which pretty much reached its peak when I finally got my hands on the waivers they've been issuing and discovered that they were unsigned, undated. One was explicitly¹⁴ retroactive. Most of the rest of the ones are implicitly¹⁵ retroactive. And that's just no way to run an ethics program.

SIEGEL: I mean these are waivers to presidential appointees saying, you don't have to file, or you don't have to comply with ethics rules.

SHAUB JR.: Not file but comply, yes.

SIEGEL: Comply - when Donald Trump was elected, you famously unfurnished your office, ready to vacate it at a moment's notice. Did you ever feel deterred¹⁶ by the threat of being dismissed?

SHAUB JR.: No. And in fact the reason I took things out of my office was to remind myself not to be attached to that office and not to be afraid to take stands that I needed to take.

SIEGEL: Walter Shaub, outgoing director of the Office of Government Ethics, thanks for talking with us.

SHAUB JR.: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

1 ethics   

n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准

参考例句：

• The ethics of his profession don't permit him to do that.他的职业道德不允许他那样做。
• Personal ethics and professional ethics sometimes conflict.个人道德和职业道德有时会相互抵触。

2 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

3 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

4 compliance   

n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从

参考例句：

• I was surprised by his compliance with these terms.我对他竟然依从了这些条件而感到吃惊。
• She gave up the idea in compliance with his desire.她顺从他的愿望而放弃自己的主意。

5 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

6 violation   

n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯

参考例句：

• He roared that was a violation of the rules.他大声说，那是违反规则的。
• He was fined 200 dollars for violation of traffic regulation.他因违反交通规则被罚款200美元。

7 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。

8 divested   

v.剥夺( divest的过去式和过去分词 )；脱去（衣服）；2。从…取去…；1。（给某人）脱衣服

参考例句：

• He divested himself of his jacket. 他脱去了短上衣。
• He swiftly divested himself of his clothes. 他迅速脱掉衣服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。

10 vein   

n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络

参考例句：

• The girl is not in the vein for singing today.那女孩今天没有心情唱歌。
• The doctor injects glucose into the patient's vein.医生把葡萄糖注射入病人的静脉。

11 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

12 ethical   

adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的

参考例句：

• It is necessary to get the youth to have a high ethical concept.必须使青年具有高度的道德观念。
• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。

13 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

14 explicitly   

ad.明确地，显然地

参考例句：

• The plan does not explicitly endorse the private ownership of land. 该计划没有明确地支持土地私有制。
• SARA amended section 113 to provide explicitly for a right to contribution. 《最高基金修正与再授权法案》修正了第123条，清楚地规定了分配权。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

15 implicitly   

adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地

参考例句：

• Many verbs and many words of other kinds are implicitly causal. 许多动词和许多其他类词都蕴涵着因果关系。
• I can trust Mr. Somerville implicitly, I suppose? 我想，我可以毫无保留地信任萨莫维尔先生吧？

16 deterred   

v.阻止，制止( deter的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I told him I wasn't interested, but he wasn't deterred. 我已告诉他我不感兴趣，可他却不罢休。
• Jeremy was not deterred by this criticism. 杰里米没有因这一批评而却步。 来自辞典例句