MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Trump White House rejects normative ethical standards. (Photo: Justin Baeder)

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Walter M. Shaub Jr. -- the chief of the Office of Government Ethics -- has just resigned, and he is leaving with a corrosive, blunt warning, according to the New York Times: "I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point [when it comes to White House and government ethics]." The Times states in a July 17 article about an interview with Shaub:

Actions by President Trump and his administration have created a historic ethics crisis, the departing head of the Office of Government Ethics said. He called for major changes in federal law to expand the power and reach of the oversight office and combat the threat.

Walter M. Shaub Jr., who is resigning as the federal government's top ethics watchdog on Tuesday, said the Trump administration had flouted or directly challenged long-accepted norms in a way that threatened to undermine the United States' ethical standards, which have been admired around the world.

"It's hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we're not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility," Mr. Shaub said in a two-hour interview this past weekend — a weekend Mr. Trump let the world know he was spending at a family-owned golf club that was being paid to host the U.S. Women's Open tournament. "I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point."

There was no love lost between Shaub, appointed for a five-year term in 2013 by President Obama, and the White House. Business Insider picked up on the New York Times report and observed,

The White House blasted the outgoing head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, just days before he's set to leave the post....

"Mr. Schaub's penchant for raising concerns on matters well outside his scope with the media before ever raising them with the White House — which happens to be his actual day job — is rather telling," White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters, said in a statement to the Times that misspelled Shaub's name.

"The truth is, Mr. Schaub is not interested in advising the executive branch on ethics. He's interested in grandstanding and lobbying for more expansive powers in the office he holds."

The Times notes that the current conflict between the White House and the government ethics office is unique to the Trump administration:

Mr. Shaub called for nearly a dozen legal changes to strengthen the federal ethics system: changes that, in many cases, he had not considered necessary before Mr. Trump's election. Every other president since the 1970s, Republican or Democrat, worked closely with the ethics office, he said.

Shaub is now joining the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit organization, to try to strengthen the Office of Government Ethics from the outside as a private citizen. In the Times article, the list of the alleged ethical violations in the Trump administration cascades down like a waterfall. It begins, of course, with a monumental ethical conflict of interest: Trump has never divested himself from the profits his company is making while he serves as president of the United States. Meanwhile, he is using the presidency to enhance the Trump brand through regular visits to Trump golf courses (he has made nearly 40 such visits so far), Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties -- as well as ongoing mentions of Trump "products." It is, in fact, almost impossible to disentangle his role as president from his role as primary owner of The Trump Organization.

As for the latter, Shaub told CNNMoney, "[I had] some very specific recommendations, like stop going to your properties or announce that White House officials won't go to those properties."

This free promotion, which leads to personal profit, is also benefitting family members like Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. Yahoo News reported on Shaub's reaction to the White House shilling for Ivanka's clothes line:

In February, Shaub called on the White House to investigate Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump's top advisers, for comments she made promoting Ivanka Trump's brand.

In an appearance on "Fox & Friends," Conway urged viewers to "go buy Ivanka's stuff" after Nordstrom decided to drop Ivanka Trump products from its stores.

"This is just a wonderful line. I own some of it," Conway said from the James S. Brady Briefing Room, with the official White House seal in full view. "I'm going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online."

"Executive branch officials should use the authority entrusted in them for the benefit of the American public and not for private profit," Shaub wrote in a letter to Trump's deputy counsel.

In an authoritarian administration, key words and concepts are redefined to meet the needs of the tyrants in charge. In the Trump White House, there don't appear to be any fixed ethical standards. "Ethics" have become adapted to personal needs, whims and desires. That is why Shaub is leaving, and we should all take note.