With these billionaires, its going to take a lot more time, said Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the Bush White House from 2005 to 2007. Painter recalled that when he joined the government 12 years ago, it took him half a day to fill out the initial financial disclosure form. But, he said, I was just a law professor. I have mutual funds. I dont even own any individual stocks, and its really a pretty boring report.
By comparison, when Painter helped shepherd Hank Paulson to confirmation as treasury secretary in 2006, it took the Goldman Sachs CEO and a team of pricey outside lawyers two-and-a-half weeks to complete the same form. The task of vetting and then preparing ethics agreements for Trumps nominees now falls to the Office of Government Ethics, a relatively small federal agency with about 80 employees and an annual budget of $16 million. The office reviews each nominees financial disclosure report for potential conflicts of interest and then instructs them what assets they must unload, among other steps they may have to take, to comply with the law once they take office. The result is a signed agreement that is sent to the Senate and posted publicly. Tillerson, for example, is expected to have to divest himself completely from Exxon Mobil, including forgoing any stock options to which he may be entitled.
