Kellyanne Conway has jumped into President Trump’s ongoing, one-sided feud with Nordstrom department stores, which have stopped carrying his daughter Ivanka Trump’s fashion line.
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I would tell you,” Conway said on Fox & Friends, while standing at the podium in the White House briefing room on Thursday morning.
The Nordstrom saga has now crossed the line from a somewhat vague conflict of interest (Trump seemed like he was defending his daughter, but his company, the Trump Organization, also owns the Ivanka Trump brand) to a seemingly more clear-cut violation of federal ethics rules.
Federal employees in the executive branch, including Conway, aren’t allowed to “endorse any product, service or enterprise.”
The rules are strict, and even cover things like writing book blurbs for authors the federal employees admire. (Not allowed.) When The Revenant, a novel written by Michael Punke, Obama’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization, was made into an Oscar-nominated movie, Punke couldn’t even talk about the film because to do so might violate federal conflict of interest rules.
The Office of Government Ethics just got its first big test under Trump
The good news for Conway is that she appears to have broken the rules but probably not committed a federal crime. Criminal ethics violations are limited to financial conflicts of interest, accepting bribes, supplementing government salaries, getting involved in lawsuits against the federal government, and being paid in connection to matters affecting the government, as well as restrictions on what government employees can do after they leave office.
So it’s up to the White House itself, according to federal ethics regulations, to discipline Conway. If they don’t, the Office of Government Ethics can step in. There are a few options for what happens next, according to the Code of Federal Regulations:
If the ethics office thinks Conway did commit a crime, its director, Walter Shaub, can refer the matter to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
Alternatively, Shaub can recommend an investigation. If the investigation isn’t completed in a timely fashion, he can inform the president.
After the investigation, or when Shaub decides a “reasonable time” has passed without a conclusion, the matter either goes to the Office of Government Ethics’ general counsel or to a hearing before an administrative law judge.
Either way, Shaub then would review the counsel’s or judge’s recommendation and could suggest (but not require) that Conway be disciplined, a decision that will be made public. (If the ethics violation is ongoing, Shaub can also order a federal employee to stop doing it.)
The problem with this process, for ethics watchdogs, is that the buck stops with the president. Shaub’s only trump card, if his recommendations (which aren’t binding) aren’t followed, is that he can tell the president a federal agency is refusing to discipline its employees.
But Conway is a top adviser, not a low-level federal employee whose misdeeds are generally beneath the president’s notice. And Trump himself tweeted angrily about Nordstrom’s decision. In a January 12 tweet, he endorsed L.L. Bean:
Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L.Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L.Bean. @LBPerfectMaine
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017
He doesn’t seem inclined to take Conway’s ethics violation particularly seriously.
Shaub showed a willingness to take on the president before he was inaugurated, blasting Trump’s plan for leaving his adult sons charge of his businesses rather than selling them and putting the proceeds into a blind trust. It was an unusually public statement that stopped just short of calling Trump unpatriotic. But Shaub’s office, known for its pointed tweets before Trump took office, has been relatively quiet in the first few weeks of the administration. That might be about to change.