Walter Shaub, the former head of OGE who is now the senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said he is “heartened” that Apol flagged Trump’s disclosure errors to the Justice Department.
“If DOJ investigates and determines that president Trump knew of his debt to Cohen when he filed last year’s report, there will be reason to suspect that his omission of the debt from last year’s report was ‘knowing and willful,’ which would be a crime,” Shaub, who resigned in July 2017, said in a written statement. “No one from the Trump camp asked OGE last year whether the debt was reportable and that, instead, President Trump’s attorney asked OGE to allow him to be the first filer in history to be excused from the obligation to certify that his report was true.”
Apol’s letter to the Justice Department is “highly unusual,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the non-profit watchdog group Public Citizen.
“It’s unprecedented,” Holman said. “All the evidence strongly indicates that Trump lied on his previous financial disclosure form.”
Apol wrote the letter in connection to a complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-partisan watchdog group that asked the DOJ and OGE to probe whether the payment should have been reported on last year's form and whether the failure to do so was knowing and willful.
CREW on Wednesday asked the Justice Department for a criminal investigation into the omission, with Executive Director Noah Bookbinder saying that failure to properly disclose ethics information carries civil and criminal penalties, and willfully making a false statement to the government can be punishable by up to five years in prison.
“There is substantial evidence that President Trump had knowledge of the loan when he filed his public financial disclosures last year, despite his failure to report it,” Bookbinder said. “If the department is not already investigating the president’s failure to disclose the loan last year, it should open an investigation immediately.”................................
= new reply since forum marked as read
