Trump Lobbying Ban Weakens Obama Rules
The opacity administration.
President Donald Trump’s much-hyped ban on administration officials becoming lobbyists removed some of President Barack Obama’s ethics rules instead of strengthening them.
Trump’s ethics pledge, issued as an executive order on Saturday, includes a five-year “lobbying ban” that falls short of its name, preventing officials from lobbying the agency they worked in for five years after they leave, but allowing them to lobby other parts of the government.
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The order also lets lobbyists join the administration as long as they don’t work on anything they specifically lobbied on for two years. Obama’s order from 2009, which Trump revoked, blocked people who were registered lobbyists in the preceding year from taking administration jobs.
“Lobbyists bring special interest baggage with them when they pass through the revolving door to go to work in the very agencies they once lobbied,” Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, the last two presidents’ ethics lawyers now at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “Obama banned this practice but Trump has brought it back.”
