Trump official whines about ‘ethics checks’ for corrupt administration

A senior member of Trump’s corruption-plagued administration is complaining about how hard it is to vet prospective government employees to make sure they’re not corrupt.

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, complained at a meeting of the right-wing Hamilton Society that ethics guidelines are supposedly making it too hard to hire new people.

Bolton claimed that due to the “excessive nature of the so-called ethics checks,” it’s “harder to get things done” compared to his time serving under President George H.W. Bush.

As far as Bolton is concerned, ethics guidelines are part of a “system to discourage people from coming into government.”

It’s a bad look for a government official to be whining about anti-corruption measures — but it’s par for the course in the corrupt Trump administration.

Trump set the bar low with his refusal to put his assets in a blind trust, or to place any separation whatsoever between his private business interests and his presidency — breaking a tradition that had long been followed by presidents from both parties.

As a result, Trump has been able to leverage his position of power into personal profit through his own hotels and golf clubs.

Multiple members of Trump’s cabinet have also been caught behaving unethically.

Tom Price, who served as Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, was ousted after he was caught taking private luxury airplane rides at taxpayer expense.

Trump’s energy secretary and veterans affairs secretary took similar flights as well.

Scott Pruitt, Trump’s handpicked EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) chief, made headlines on an almost daily basis as Americans learned about his corruption. Pruitt had a sweetheart deal for a condo financed by a lobbyist, traveled on private luxury flights, and made his employees disguise personal travel as government expenses.

He even wasted millions of tax dollars on security after claiming he faced such “threats” to his safety as a man criticizing his policies at an airport.

The first person to hold Bolton’s job in the Trump administration was the infamously corrupt Michael Flynn, who received foreign payments from the Russian government that he later failed to disclose when joining the U.S. government.

If anything, the record shows that ethics rules and regulations have not gone far enough to prevent corruption among Trump and his underlings.

Yet all Bolton can do is complain that they can’t get away with more.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.