The Massachusetts Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has called on Donald Trump to institute new ethics rules to guard against scandals involving appointees such as Elon Musk, the SpaceX, Tesla and X owner who will jointly lead an effort to slash federal spending after the new administration takes power on Monday.
Trump “can and should top” Joe Biden’s ethics standards for government officials, Warren told Trump’s transition co-chairs in a letter exclusively obtained by the Guardian.
Offering seven suggestions related to lobbyists and lobbying, Warren added: “I encourage you to also consider adding new provisions to address some of the key corruption risks that arose during President Trump’s last administration – including restrictions on special government employees who maintain dual private-sector employment.”
Having donated hundreds of millions to Trump’s campaign, Musk installed himself at Trump’s side during transition planning. The South African-born billionaire will now oversee a so-called “department of government and efficiency”, or Doge, an attempt to cut trillions of dollars from government programs, jointly led by Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech investor.
Warren also said Trump should institute ethics standards for “former officials who engage in business deals with foreign governments” – an apparent jab at Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and first-term chief adviser whose firm received $2bn from a Saudi investment fund shortly after Trump left power four years ago.
The recipients of Warren’s letter, Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, will be subject to ethics standards if confirmed to Trump’s cabinet. Lutnick, chair and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, is nominated for commerce secretary. McMahon, co-founder and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, was small business administrator in Trump’s first administration and is now nominated for education secretary.
In her letter, Warren said an ethics pledge issued under Trump’s name in 2017, at the outset of his first administration, “included unique strengths, such as a strong post-employment ban on lobbying activities and a permanent ban on former officials working as foreign agents.
“And while President Biden issued a strong ethics pledge [in 2021], it still contained troubling elements, such as narrowing President Trump’s ban on former officials engaging in shadow lobbying” – defined by the Sunshine Foundation as “perform[ing] advocacy to influence public policy, like meeting legislators or their staff, without registering as a lobbyist”.
“President Trump can and should top President Biden’s standard, and his own, with an ethics pledge that includes key improvements,” Warren said, adding: “Each of the last three presidents has required incoming appointees to abide by an ethics pledge, in response to growing public concern about government officials’ conflicts of interest.
“President Trump’s own 2017 ethics pledge sought to restrict the ties between appointees and the lobbyists and foreign governments seeking to influence them and to profit from their relationships.
“The pledges help fill the gaps in existing ethics law and hold officials to robust standards of public integrity. These pledges have become expected because the American people have seen that, all too often, government officials use their positions to benefit their own pocketbooks, as well as the special interests, and even foreign governments, that have employed them before and after their government service.
“Even the appearance of such corruption is enough to damage Americans’ trust in government – which has reached an all-time low and appears to be trending in the wrong direction.”
According to Pew Research, public trust in the federal government stood at 22% in April 2024. That was up from the year before, when just 16% of Americans “said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time, which was among the lowest measures in nearly seven decades of polling”.
Warren’s letter may raise eyebrows among Democrats, given continuing controversy over Trump’s own ethics problems, including a multimillion-dollar business fraud penalty in New York; his appointment of billionaires to key roles; and proliferating lobbying scandals that marked his first term.
Prominently, in his first term Trump appointed Scott Pruitt, an oil industry lobbyist, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt eventually resigned, amid scandal.
This week, lobbying work by nominees for key positions in the second Trump administration has come under scrutiny, not least in the case of Pam Bondi, picked for attorney general and recently a lobbyist for interests including Amazon, General Motors, Uber and Qatar.
Democrats also charge that Trump never properly divested from his own business interests while in power first time round. Last year, Democrats on the House oversight committee released a report that said Trump “repeatedly and willfully” violated the constitution by “allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars from some of the most corrupt nations on Earth”, prominently including China.
Earlier this month, Trump’s company released an ethics pledge, saying he would not be involved while in power. Experts said the pledge was not strong enough.
In her letter to Lutnick and McMahon, Warren also said Trump should commit not to rescind ethics standards on leaving office, as he did in 2021.
That move, countering a campaign promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington corruption, echoed a move by Bill Clinton that Trump had criticized strongly, saying Clinton “rigged the system on his way out”.
