On Saturday, January 28, President Trump issued an Executive Order setting forth the ethics regulations governing current and future executive agency appointments, which is both more restrictive and less restrictive than the 2009 Obama Executive Order addressing the same issue. Specifically, and with respect to the former, President Trump’s order bans all executive agency appointees from engaging in “lobbying activities” with respect to the particular agency in which the appointee served for a period of five years after leaving the Administration, and further prohibits such appointees from lobbying on behalf of a foreign government or political party during the remainder of their lifetimes (if such activities would require registration “under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938”). See §§ 1.1, 1.4. These two prohibitions were absent from the Obama-era counterpart and mirror two of Trump’s promises outlined in his Contract with the American Voter.
Continue Reading Trump’s Ethics Executive Order More Concerned with Post-Government Employment Activities