Government ethics chief calls Trump's conflicts of interest plan "meaningless"

The chief of the Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday lambasted President-elect Trump’s newly announced conflicts of interest plan as “meaningless.”

OGE chief Walter Shaub said Trump’s “stepping back” from his business interests would be expected regardless of his plan to do so, but added that Trump failed to address “the perception that government leaders would use their official positions for personal profit.”

The federal ethics official also decried the delay in Cabinet nominees completing nondisclosure forms.

“I need to talk about ethics today because the plan the president has announced doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met,” Shaub told reporters at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday evening.