Jason Chaffetz   This is the way dictatorships start. A whistleblower criticizes the boss and the boss’s minions destroy the critic. Pretty simple. If they get by with it they continue to strong-arm his critics until none are left and voila: a dictatorship. Yes, of course, it’s messier than that and takes longer, but that’s […]

Bipartisan and nonpartisan experts on government ethics agree that Trump’s attempt to quiet the noise about his conflicts of interest are not working. The solution is simple, but he won’t do it. Opinion from The Washington Post Trump is headed toward an ethics train wreck By Jennifer Rubin January 12 President-elect Donald Trump’s showy press […]

Himself. On the day the president-elect told us he would resolve concerns about his conflicts of interest, he instead built his cult of personality. Since he requires adulation and reporters do not applaud, he packed the room with staff, let the vice president warm up the crowd, and produced an anomaly—a presidential press conference with […]

New York magazine looks at the president-elect’s behavior at his Trump Tower event yesterday and calls it consistent with, but not yet proof of, the thesis that he’s an emerging autocrat. It’s an honest analysis:  /THE NATIONAL INTEREST January 11, 2017 Donald Trump to America: I Won, Accountability Is Over By Jonathan Chait Photo: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images […]

You’re behaving like a fifteen-year-old. Stop it! You’re going to be president of the United States now. You can’t keep acting like that. I’m treating you like a child? Yes I am, because you’re acting like one. Listen to me. The top three U.S. intelligence agencies have just told you that the Russians have compromising […]

Another section of the wall House Republicans tried to build last week against ethics investigators has been discovered intact. Their attempt to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics failed, but it turns out they succeeded in a rule change allowing them to hide office documents from investigators. What in the world are they afraid of? […]

Telephone calls today to the Senate Judiciary Committee to express opposition to the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as attorney general of the United States are of top importance. Here is a clear expression of the reasons, from the editorial page of today’s New York Times: What Are You Hiding, Jeff Sessions? By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JAN. […]

Eight of Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, many carrying serious ethics questions, rush into confirmation hearings this week without completing the vetting required by the Government Ethics Office. The transition team doesn’t even answer GEO questions, according to Director Walter Schaub. “We seem to have lost contact with the Trump-Pence transition since the election,” he wrote […]

  Rejecting Donald Trump has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, liberalism, losing an election, the lying media, or even jobs. It’s not even about Donald. It’s about our people and the standards we believe in. Standards, we now realize, that have changed on an apocalyptic scale. They produced Donald Trump and they will change […]

A glaring Trump transition story hiding in plain sight: Trump is historically unpopular The press ought to start telling that tale on a daily basis ERIC BOEHLERT, MEDIA MATTERS (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)(Credit: AP) This article originally appeared on Media Matters and is reprinted here from Salon. There are lots of ways the political press continues to normalize President-elect Donald […]