One of President Donald Trump‘s first actions in office was to rescind former President Joe Biden’s ethics executive order, which included a pledge for federal government political appointees, but he did not replace it with his own as he did during his first term.
That pledge called on Biden’s executive branch political appointees to “commit to decision-making on the merits and exclusively in the public interest, without regard to private gain or personal benefit.”
Biden’s pledge also called on appointees to “commit to conduct that upholds the independence of law enforcement and precludes improper interference with investigative or prosecutorial decisions of the Department of Justice.”
“I commit to ethical choices of post-government employment that do not raise the appearance that I have used my government service for private gain, including by using confidential information acquired and relationships established for the benefit of future clients,” the pledge concluded.
Biden’s pledge, which was enforceable by the attorney general in civil court with exceptions, was introduced through an executive order that simultaneously included lobbying gifts, revolving-door employment, and golden parachutes.
Government accountability and transparency groups, such as watchdog organization Common Cause, have expressed concerns with Trump’s decision not to implement his own ethics executive order, at least so far. In contrast, they praised the ethics pledge he required in his first term. That pledge, for example, included a two-year ban on one-time lobbyists being involved in matters on which he or she lobbied and a five-year ban on ex-appointees lobbying the government.
“It’s extremely frustrating that after President Trump’s first term had a fairly strong executive order for executive branch employees, he would then rescind President Biden’s very similar executive branch order,” Common Cause senior director of legislative affairs Aaron Scherb told the Washington Examiner. “It seems somewhat hypocritical. You know, if he was for this ethics pledges, ethics executive order, the first term, why wouldn’t he be for the second term?”
Still, existing rules impose ethics requirements on officials. Linda Gustitus, a senior adviser to Wayne State University Law School’s Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, told the Washington Examiner there were laws discouraging conflicts of interest, including United States Code Title 18, the government’s primary criminal code, which should be enforced by the Justice Department. That is in addition to the Ethics and Government Act, which established the Office of Government Ethics and other regulations that call on certain appointees to make public financial disclosures and sign ethics agreements. The difference between an ethics pledge and an ethics agreement is that a pledge is more general and future-focused, while an agreement is more specific and concentrates on the present.
“Nobody seems to be paying attention to the fact that there is this Office of Government Ethics, and there are these statutes, and there are these limitations,” Gustitus said. “The executive order is on top of all of that.”
A spokeswoman for the Office of Government Ethics told the Washington Examiner that of the 27,000 public financial disclosure form filers, only 1,100 are considered by the OGE for “second-level review” and they are predominantly Cabinet secretaries and department heads.
“There’s a public financial disclosure report,” the spokeswoman said. “That is the tool that we use to detect any potential conflict of interest. For the presidentially appointed Senate-confirmed officials, once the conflicts of interest are detected, then the appropriate resolutions to those potential conflicts [are identified], and that is what the ethics agreement is. That is a memorialization of the steps that the official will take to resolve the potential conflicts of interest that have been detected.”
For Gustitus, there remains time for Trump to sign a second executive order, but time is of the essence “because people are going to be taking jobs where they need to know what their promises are.”
“From what I’ve observed from the appointments and the process, this is all blurred,” she said. “It’s really incumbent upon both Congress and the Office of Government Ethics, and inspectors general, if we have any, to step in and say where people have crossed the line or if they haven’t filed their forms.”
Scherb, of Common Cause, added, “Government executive branch employees work for the American people, and we deserve to know that these federal government employees are working in the public interest, not trying to line their own pockets.”
Irrespective of whether there is an executive order, Trump himself would not be included in it, with only tradition calling on presidents to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump’s second son, Eric Trump, for instance, is poised to retain control of the Trump Organization during his father’s second term while the president retains ownership of it. The youner Trump, for his part, has been adamant there will be a “very large wall” between the company and the government, though its ethics plan does not prevent foreign business deals, according to the New York Times.
Trump’s rescission of Biden’s ethics executive order coincides with concerns about the president’s own conflicts of interest, including creating a meme coin the weekend before his inauguration and this week’s House Republican conference retreat at his resort and golf club near Miami. There is his majority stake in the publicly traded social media platform Truth Social, as well.
On leaving office, Biden warned of the dangers of a technology oligarchy and technological industrial complex after Tesla and SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have worked to develop close relationships with Trump, including donating $1 million each to the president’s inaugural fund and receiving tickets to his inauguration in the Capitol rotunda.
Trump’s Cabinet additionally includes billionaires, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick, education secretary nominee Linda McMahon, interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum, NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman, U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom nominee Warren Stephens, and special envoy to the Middle East Steven Witkoff.
“There certainly wasn’t the ‘drain the swamp’ theme in the second campaign,” Scherb said.
Trump’s posture toward ethics concerns was previewed last month when transition aides replied to a letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that same day asking for more information about the transition’s plan to avoid ethical problems with Musk. Trump’s transition team published its ethics plan in November 2024, but federal laws and regulations do not apply to Musk as a private citizen and not a government employee, but Warren argued that they should.
“Pocahontas can play political games and send toothless letters, but the Trump-Vance transition will continue to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards possible — a standard unfamiliar to a career politician whose societal impact is 1/1024th of Elon Musk’s,” now-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner at the time.
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This week, the White House described Trump as the “most transparent and accessible president in American history,” citing his open media strategy.
“There has never been a president who communicates with the American people and the American press corps as openly and authentically as the 45th and now-47th president of the United States,” Leavitt told reporters during her first briefing.