ETHICS/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s new pick to head a key federal ethics office is winning praise from an unlikely source: the man who quit the post last year.
The White House announced Wednesday [2-7-18] evening that Trump intends to nominate a current associate counsel at the Office of Government Ethics, Emory Rounds, to serve a five-year term as the office’s director.
Rounds served in the White House counsel’s office under President George W. Bush before joining OGE in 2009.
Former OGE Director Walter Shaub, who resigned last July and has been an outspoken critic of the Trump’s administration’s handling of ethics matters, welcomed Trump’s selection of Rounds’. Shuab resigned after repeatedly denouncing Trump’s approach to government integrity and conflict-of-interest issues…
The announcement comes two days after the acting head of OGE, David Apol, appeared to take a swipe at the president and his administration in a somewhat cryptic blog post warning that some in government are acting unethically…
Rounds previously served as an ethics attorney at the Commerce Department and in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Navy.”
-Josh Gerstein, “Trump picks new federal ethics chief,” Politico, Feb. 7, 2018 09:26pm