DONALDISM/ETHICS/MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Every awards show has its critics, but President Donald Trump’s much ballyhooed ‘Fake News Awards’ has drawn attention from a group beyond the usual peanut gallery: ethics experts who say the event could run afoul of White House rules and, depending on what exactly the president says during the proceedings, the First Amendment.
The White House has not yet said what form the awards presentation, scheduled by Trump for Wednesday [1-17-18], may take. But Norman Eisen, the former special counsel for ethics for President Barack Obama, and Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, have both tweeted that if White House staff members were involved, they would be in violation of the executive branch’s Standards of Ethical Conduct, which ban employees from using their office for ‘the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise.’
Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, agreed, telling POLITICO that there were plenty of valid reasons for executive branch employees to use their position to criticize private enterprises — if a bus company were violating federal safety regulations, for instance — but that helping put on an event to bash the media would not qualify… The president is not subject to the executive branch ethical standards, but all other White House staffers are. Ethics experts say that if the undertaking were carried out exclusively by political staff from the Trump campaign or the Republican National Committee — and not government employees in the White House — there would be no problem…
The White House did not respond to questions asking whether any staff members would be involved. The Republican National Committee also did not respond to requests for comment.”
-Jason Schwartz, “Trump’s ‘Fake News Awards’ could violate ethics rules,” Politico, Jan. 15, 2018 07:24am