Reprinted with permission from Media Matters for America.
Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich is advocating for Congress to “change the ethics laws” for President-elect Donald Trump, rather than forcing Trump to “disentangle himself from his multibillion-dollar business to avoid conflicts of interest with his incoming administration.”
Following Trump’s electoral victory, ethics lawyers warned that “that no president has ever come into office with such potential entanglements” as Trump, and that his proposed plan to address his potential conflicts of interests by simply turning over his business to his children “doesn’t go far enough to ensure that Trump’s presidential duties don’t clash with his money-making dealings.” In fact, ethics lawyers have cautioned about Trump’s potential conflicts of interest since September, with the former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush Richard Painter calling Trump’s potential conflicts of interest “a serious problem” that is deserving of media attention.
Now, Gingrich, a staunch Trump supporter, is calling for “a whole new approach” for Congress to address Trump’s potential conflicts of interest: “Change the ethics laws.” Gingrich also suggested that Trump could use “the power of the pardon” to get around ethics laws by saying “Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.”
According to Politico:
Newt Gingrich has a take on how Donald Trump can keep from running afoul of U.S. ethics laws: Change the ethics laws.
Trump is currently grappling with how to sufficiently disentangle himself from his multibillion-dollar business to avoid conflicts of interest with his incoming administration, and the president-elect has already pushed back a promised announcement of an ethics firewall.
Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and one-time potential running mate for Trump, says Trump should push Congress for legislation that accounts for a billionaire businessman in the White House.
“We’ve never seen this kind of wealth in the White House, and so traditional rules don’t work,” Gingrich said Monday during an appearance on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” about the president-elect’s business interests. “We’re going to have to think up a whole new approach.”
And should someone in the Trump administration cross the line, Gingrich has a potential answer for that too.
“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich said. “It’s a totally open power. He could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period. Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”
[…]
Gingrich — who says he is not joining Trump’s administration — didn’t provide many details for what a new approach would entail, other than reiterating his support for an outside panel of experts Trump should convene that would regularly monitor how his company and government are operating and “offer warnings if they get too close to the edge.”
