as a bizarre moment. i was surprised that he called when you're in the oval office, and if you says, who are you? , you do. here and: a former washington correspondent talks about covering president trump and his supporters for the irish media during and after the 20 16th presidential election season in her book "in america." swamp" isthe evocative. is that notion that d.c. was built on a swap, and by draining it, taking out -- built wamp, and by s dreading it, taking out others. announcer: and sunday night on

"q&a." discussionit next, a of federal employees and how they relate to president trump's decision to maintain control of his business operations while in office. speakers include the former director of the office of government ethics, new york university brendan's institute in washington, d.c. hosting this 90-minute event. center in washington, d.c., hosting this event. i am with the brennan center for justice. the cohosts ofk this event this afternoon and for being such a great partner

to the brennan center for justice. on behalf of the brennan center, we are pleased you have joined us for what we know is an exciting conversation on presidential ethics law, and this is a particularly good time to have this discussion. the brennan center, for those of you who do not know, seeks to improve our broken systems of justice and democracy, and we like to use advocacy, research, and strategic negotiations to do just that. we work on what we think are very cutting edge issues, such as voting rights, ethics, and no justice reform, racial justice, and a host of other issues too, again, do just that, make our system stronger and more effective. the brennan center if you have not already on facebook and twitter. check out our media.

and with that said, i am pleased to into deuce our moderator for today's program, kimberly atkins -- i am pleased to introduce our moderator for today's program, kimberly atkins. kimberly: thank you so much. president donald trump's decision to keep control of his business empire despite apparent conflicts of interest is but one of a number of ethical controversies that have made headlines since inauguration day one year ago. falling byardrails the wayside, what can be done to federal ethics laws to give the public confidence that their leaders will put the american people first? what are the most significant gaps that exist in federal ethics regulation? what are the special challenges that accompany any effort to

regulate a president's conduct in office, and one are some of the -- and what are some of the most prominent ideas of reform? professor of law from the washington university school b, and awalter shau withr director, daniel, the democracy program at the brennan center for justice and the nyu school of law. welcome to the brennan center of justice here at nyu. is and, again, my name kimberly atkins, and i am a political columnist and reporter for "the boston herald." i also wanted to note in the beginning that we will have time at the end for questions, so keep them and hold them tight, and we will get to them later, but i wanted to start out

talking about the background of federal ethics laws and how they apply to the president. >> well, that is a good question. laws affectethics the president, but one of the most important is the federal not, and thates exemption dates back to the late 1980's, although it was applied before. what is interesting, of course, and most folks know this, is that historically, presidents notwithstanding that they were not prohibited from having conflicts of interest took steps, sometimes rather elaborate steps to avoid them nonetheless, and usually that took the form, and my will correct me if i am wrong, because they have

worked in this space longer that i have, but limiting the types of assets they held, diversified mutual funds, make accounts, or placing other types of assets in a blind trust, which was really shielded from their control and their knowledge. so that was a key element of the federal ethics regime that does not apply to the present. bribery, weving have never really proven that because the president has never been prosecuted, but most of us would agree that presidents can take bribes. there are significantly fewer constraints than for virtually any other federal official other than the vice president. kimberly: ok, water, talk about the rules in place along the way to complement and supplement -- walter, talk about the rules and place.

walter: with regard to the president? kimberly: with regard to the president, yes. walter: it is true that the president is not covered by the live does nothe impose a criminal penalty for the president's conflict of interests, but that does not mean as a president asserted a little more than a year ago -- the president obviously can have , anything of interest that creates a financial interest that runs contrary to the duties of your position, and a president can certainly do that, and we have seen this president do that. it is not entirely true that no laws cover the president in regard to conflicts of interest were ethics in general. technically, the president is covered by the ethics rules, , the office of

government ethics, has created an exception to allow the president to accept certain gifts. in the past year -- it became effective january 1, but it was prior to thatnal in 2016. it virtually created a new requirement that you should consider if you can accept a it, and should you accept and would it create a concern on the part of a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts as to whether or not this would impede your impartiality in your decision-making or lead you to give greater access to someone. i do not suspect for a second that that is being applied, and it should be, and good government groups and reporters should be asking if they see him except a gift, what is your analysis in applying those factors? another obscure provision that

applies to the president is that in 2012, the president past an it was somehow incorrectly reported that that law was rescinded. it has not been rescinded. one transparency portion was the law was but originally a response to a "60 minutes" piece that suggested members of congress were by their position by engaging in trades around the time that laws are being passed and other decisions are being made, and it was initially intended to apply only to the legislative branch, and president position by engaging in trades around the time that laws are obama calledn congress, sort of shame to them in their state of the union speech that they should pass that. that prompted an action that they extended it to the executive branch. , all right, pass it and became like a christmas tree with people hanging ornaments on it, because there were over 30 of amendment in the final weeks or so.

amendmentsre over 30 in the final weeks or so. what apply to employees applied to the president, and one of the restrictions was a requirement under a section to recuse from any particular matter affecting the finances of anyone you have an arrangement with for future employment or compensation or are negotiating for one of those, and that is interesting, because it imposes a recusal ,equirement on the president and as we will discuss later, that has been the subject of some constitutional debate as to thiser congress can impose recusal on the president, but, in fact, they have. it just has not been challenged because nobody has tried to assert it. but that was the crossing of a threshold, and i do not know if they did it liberally, and as with any history, you have to assume they knew what they were doing.

-- and i do not know if they did it deliberately, and as with history, you have to assume they knew what they were doing. kimberly: what is missing, some of the loopholes? can you give us an overview of that? emphasize thatto the country's first conflict of interest law does apply to the and these are found in the united states constitution, the foreign emoluments clause and the domestic emoluments clause. any official is prevented from accepting something of value from a foreign government, and that, of course, has been the butect of some litigation, what i think that represents is that our framers recognized the danger that government officials, including the president, could be influenced by money or anything of value that they received.

exceptions,s of problems that need to be filled, i think what was identified, in 1989, congress amended this criminal financial conflict of so that itatute exempted the president and the vice president from its reach. mistake, that was a and i think if we go back a couple more decades, back to 1962, when president kennedy was submitting comprehensive ethics reforms before congress, president kennedy included in that an exception for the president and the vice president, and congress rejected it and from 1962 on imposed it on the president and the five president the financial statute. i think when we get a congress that cares again about our

founding principles and that conflicts of interest and protecting the public trust, when we get that congress, i think that congress needs to reenact this financial criminal conflict of interest provision on the president. the other thing i want to mention is it is another problem of interestict standards or ethics standards. this is a process. high-level officials are required by statute to fill out somewhat detailed forms about their financial interests, but the statute has been interpreted so that if a government official has a company, a business, the official does not need to disclose the debt and financial relationships of that company. we have a president who, of 's,rse, has hundreds of llc

and the office of government ethics had to interpret the statute, the disclosure statute. he is not required to disclose the relationship, including the 's, those of those llc companies, so the financial disclosure laws are probably adequate for many people in the room, someone like myself of modest means, but they are not adequate to deal with someone who is using -- you has their own companies, because it has been interpreted not to require disclosures, so someone like for someone might jared kushner, we have to change the laws so we can get visibility into the financial connections and the debt. notn addition to them having that, the other thing lacking about disclosure, ethics theyosure, if you ever see

disclose these in very broad ranges, like $5 million to $20 million. just to see what your asset is, that may be adequate, but one of the things we have looked at is if you look at other countries, saint italy under silvio , he was not necessarily directly taking government action to benefit his media empire, although he was. but there is also a pattern of seeking businesses and sectors of industry buying advertising at inflated prices at his companies and increasing their value, and that was actually a primary way he in which to himself off of being prime minister of italy. we have seen that somewhat with the husband and wife president of argentina who actually own a chain of hotels, so when you have these broad ranges, it

obscures the extent to which certain assets may be increased in value for other reasons than just the market. more duringllion the most recent period that it did before the president became president. he actually disclosed that on his report, but that is a good example. a morear-a-lago is attractive place to play and be a member now that it is with the president of the united states. that is something that the forms would not necessarily reveal right now. step backi want to and really posed to the panel, why should we care about these issues? why do we care about conflicts of interest? i know there are a lot of supporters of the president who say he is a good businessman. he as a right to make money. we knew he was a businessman

when he was elected. so why do we have these confident of interest laws, and why do we care about them? >> if i can do that and go back to some points we just covered. kathleen knows she and i disagree on one, but it is h or full disagreement. cheerful is a disagreement. i do not think it is a matter of going back to what it was prior to the 1989 amendment. i think it was understood at the moment that the criminal statute did not apply to the president, and, of course, in 1974, writing on behalf of the justice department, they wrote articulating that, and oge cited that opinion again, so i think by 1989 when they put that in there, i think there was some nervousness at the tail end of the reagan administration about consequences for some alleged

don't thinki anybody seriously thought at the time that they were changing the law. i think they thought they were codifying it. in terms of liabilities for companies, i am the one who --tifies the presidents president's financial disclosure, and i think it is compliant for what he disclosed. now, if it turns out there are things he did not disclosed, that is different. dealing with the situation we're in in terms of disclosure, i treatment of companies, saying you do not have to disclose their liabilities or business partners is consistent with the rest of the application of the statute, because if, for instance, if you hold stock in coca-cola or exxon or any other large, publicly traded company, you are not necessarily going to know as just a random person who called up your broker and said by five chairs -- shares -- buy five sh

ares of coca-cola that you know who their affiliates are, so i think this is about companies and more specifically rightly held family companies, like president trump's family companies, jared kushner's andly company -- companies, a head of commerce coming from accuweather, which is a very closely held family company, so i think this is a new problem that we have not had a lot of experience dealing with, and the law has not caught up with the fact that now we have got public officials with these privately held companies, and then in terms of the ranges, again, i tend to look at it as a technician. i am not sure i would agree that we need to break the ranges into more pieces, particularly on the value side, because if you have

a one dollar asset, it is still a conflict of interest unless there is an exemption that applies. >> it might be more important on the income side. so if you see a greatly increased revenue stream, i think that might be more indicative. . take your point that is may be less important. >> and i think if we strip out publicly traded companies -- i do not know about knowing that, but these privately held companies, we want to know what that is about. but all of this goes back to why does this matter, and it is at its most basic core about corruption, whether or not somebody is misusing or abusing the authority and trust -- entrusted to them for their own personal gain or the gain of some other private individual or , and if we have people

going into government to enrich themselves or enrich others by using governmental authority, and i am not talking about collecting your salary but using government authority that is entrusted to you by the people to be used for their benefit, but you used that authority for your own benefit, then that calls into question the legitimacy of government as a concept, much less the individual case, and that is the hallmark of the countries that we labeled banana republics or things, where the leaders can just help themselves. that -- putinrs used his power to become one of the richest men in the world. you have to ask yourself. but even beyond the actual these civilized,

modern, western society, the sense that we should not even have to ask the question. the burden should be on the government official to take whatever actions they can to show us that there is no remaining conflict of interest, and that said, it should be, because the public cannot have access to enough information to know the link between a financial interest and a decision. very hard to draw. in many cases, we find ourselves highlighting the smaller violations that are the 10 area in the coal mine that tell us there is a broader issue going on -- that are the canary in the coal mine that tell us there is a broader issue going on. eliminating conflicts of interests so that you can know that my decisions are based on the policies i declared when you voted for me rather than on my own personal enrichment or the

personal enrichment of a third party. >> we have had presidents have this happen up till now. russia, andned another example is venezuela. but it basket place now, was a fairly stable and prosperous democracy for many years, and people think of shop ez as doing that, but this was at the top before. there is speculation and a vast array of literature that documents the extent to which perception of self-dealing at the top undermine the public institution,cratic and we are seeing that trend in reduced faith in democracy, and the united states is not immune to that. and just to continue the canary in the coal mine metaphor,

ethics is to some extent indicative of a broader range of democratic concerns, because if you take some of the idea that the president cannot have a conflict of interest in the extreme, you get the idea that the president is with that of the state, and that takes you into a very different political philosophy than what our country was founded on, so i think this is important. if you worry about executive power, i do not want to be harping on the presidents businesses, but i also do not want him to -- on the president 's businesses, but i do not want authority.ng his kimberly: i want to get to some solutions about reform, but before we get there, i will start with you, kathleen, what

are the limits of ethics laws, and what is it set by? is it by the constitution or something else? the constitution, if we take a look at the foreign and domestic a emoluments clause is, the founders were concerned about conflicts, but it also helps ground us in something that stan was alluding to, the idea that our government officials are given power not so they can exercise it on behalf of themselves or their family members so they can exercise it on behalf of their mission of the public interest on behalf of all of us, so at the very heart of the matter is this -- i will use a legal term -- fiduciary, officials have legal obligations to the people, which is foundational, and the government ethics standards that have been adopted by congress

and then by regulators in andting regulations otherwise really are expressions of that notion that public , and sos a public trust at the very heart of it, it is about government officials recognizing and acting as though they owe obligations to us, not just to themselves selfishly, regulations, as complicated as they can get, can be connected to this foundational principle that the public office is a public trust, and i want to acknowledge that it is not at all clear that this president will recognize this, that truth. i think he really is challenging , and his challenge to

it is consistent with his other anti-democratic tendencies that we have seen in attacking not just foundational principles like the public all this is a public trust but foundational protections for our democracy. it is all of one, it seems to me. make a pitchke to to people who like this president, because the next president may not be a real estate person. it could be a tech person or a media mogul, and this would up to that individual, so just because you like this president, and many people do, and i understand and respect that, it does not mean that you should not care about this, and every president tends to forget that the next president may have a very different philosophy, and things for themselves that they may like for someone else.

a really good point, that it goes to a fundamental premise to us being a country and having a government, and so the question becomes do you serve the government, or does the government serve you, and if you serve the government, as would be the case in an authoritarian country where the king rules all or the leader rules all, then it might make sense to misuse the criminal apparatus to go after your vanquished political rival and punish them for having dared to run against you, or if you live in a country where the government exists to serve you, maybe the criminal apparatus is for looking for crimes that are a threat to you right now, not digging up things from the past, back behind the statute of limitations in some case, and that is where you see the bleeding over of this is for me, as when they announce they're going to do offshore drilling,

and they put out a federal register notice. closes,ore the period the secretary exempts the one 'sate in which the president premier beachfront property exists, but everybody else has to wait. for the benefit of the state, ad you are in service as poster we have come to a social contract where we are going to have a government to protect us one way or another, and so i think, as dan was emphasizing, coal mine is the very broad, because this is a trend towards authoritarianism, which is this is for my benefit as your leader as opposed to i and acting out your wishes. kimberly: ok, went to remind you that we are the brennan center, and we are talking to the senior director of ethics at the campaign legal center and the former director of government

ethics, kathleen, the professor of law at washington university theol oflaw and daniel wiener t brennan center, and i am kimberly atkins. you can follow us on facebook, twitter command watch of their programs on youtube and listen to itunes podcasts. all of the information is online at brennan center.org. i want to talk a little bit about solutions or proposed reforms that you all have, but maybe kick it off first with walter explaining what oge does and why it seems at least, from my perspective as a reporter, that it was developed largely to be self-governing, at least when it comes to the white house -- and is one of the proposals tougher forog oge or something

else out of that? tool,: it is a prevention that is what it is here to do. i don't view it as part of the enforcement mechanism, it is part of the prevention mechanism, so my discussion on where to go stems from that. people come to the office of government ethics, or to any of the 4500 agencies that it askseas, and proactively for advice and we of nominees coming to oge opening up their financial assets and asking questions that go beyond what we need for the form, in order to be sure that there is not anything we are missing the has to be addressed. and by and large they tend to cooperate and the prevention mechanism, you know, it is hard to quantify what has been prevented, because you are

writing down what has not once said at the beginning of a speech that you do not hear much about ethics when things are going well and that is precisely as it should be, but you do not see people knocking on the door of an inspector general and saying, "i am thinking about doing this thing, will you investigate me and to see if i get thrown in jail if i do it?" nobody goes to the police man for advice proactively, so i think oge has a role in enforcement, which is correlated with enforcement entities and delivery information that shows wrongdoing to them, but in terms of the interactive back and forth i do not think that you have that kind of interaction with the level of success that oge had for 40 years until this past year, if people are having to report themselves to the policeman to get advice. oge's as a result,

authorities are somewhat limited. i do not necessarily think conceptually that is a terrible thing. when i was the director, my immediate supervisor was the president and i point out to people, i once last year had to fill out a form and i cannot remember what it was but i had to write the name of my supervisor and i wrote donald j. trump and i went back there to make sure that they did not alec.i was being a smart i think it vividly in the straits -- illustrates the limitations, because the departures that have occurred in the past year are the fault of congress that has refused to exercise the kind of oversight that you can be sure it would have exercised if the other candidate had one. -- won. and ultimately, only congress is going to be able to impose

consequences on a president. the president's employee is not going to be able to do that, and even if you gave him the authority he would just fire them before became effective. we are already having to bite our nails hoping that robert mueller does not get fired and it is a criminal investigation and he has the power to charge somebody with the obstruction of justice, there is no way anybody is talking about building an oge that is a special counsel like mohler, and if you did you are making a decision to throw away a prevention mechanism that has prevented a lot of harm. you have to look at the trade-offs and i think there is temptation in a lot of ways to want an easy fix to a complex problem, but my experience in this world is that the world is nuanced and easy fixes do not work well for complex problems. and i think along the lines of something dan said, you know, he made the comment about congress and to some of the same

congressmen who have no interest in looking into anything now, were asking questions about what they call pay for play, with a nonprofit, but -- and by the way, that is a fair thing to look at -- but how do you have concerns about pay for play with a nonprofit when you have a for-profit with this president that is letting people pay for access to the president, and not use the same terminology? and so, the lessons we learned in our civics classes in high school are not working out because congress is not serving as a check. even when robert mueller is done, he will only release information that will either lead to somebody being convicted, or is itself a tory in nature -- exculpatory in nature. but beyond that you will not get answers. what we do not have is a 9/11 type of commission that is

looking at all aspects of what happened in the last u.s. and to really dive in and tell us in detail or write out a report of everything they found last year. that is not happening, because the constitutional check of congress overseeing the executive branch is not working when you have one party in charge of all of it. that is not that i am for one party or against, i will probably vote against any party having total control over again, even if it means voting against a candidate i like, but getting back to the fixes, the question becomes what do you want to fix? thatu throw away 40 years seemed to do work relatively well and had built upon itself and refined itself to the point where we were doing fine tuning rather than turning the bigger dial that moved the needle up and down, for those old enough to remember knobs on a radio -- [laughter] so the kinds of things i would

like to see include -- and i have shared 13 proposals and it will not go through all of them, but the kinds of things i would like to see -- and you hear that we disagree on some of the fixes, but one of the things i would like to see is, and i think it is in, with them, is increased protection for the director of the office of government ethics. when i made my stand last year i was a guy that had student loans, no new job lined up, 19 years of federal service, one year short of the magical 20, and i thought it would be fired at 1201 on january 20. so it was get a kick out of the white house's comments that i did this for a profit. it is like, i will trade shoes with you any day. deep,tting aside their dark cynicism in, flight backed -- in comments like back my

think it would be hopeful of the director, like the head of the office of special counsel, which is not robert mueller's office by the office that investigates whistleblower retaliations, could only be fired for cause and congress had to be given 30 days notice with a written nation. something as simple as that. where i fought a battle the white house to get some records, oge has all the authority it needs to gather information and records about ethics, but none of the power. and the difference between authority and power is the authority for a judge to issue an order and the power is the ability to send marshals to your doorstep when you do not comply. oge has plenty of authority, but no u.s. marshals on hand. in terms of investigations, i do think that there is a gap in investigative authority, because there are dozens of small agencies that have no inspector general. and you also have the white house among them that is outside the scope of an inspector

general, the proposal i made is create one centralized inspector general that covers all the entities in the executive branch, other than the white house, that do not have an inspector general and give the i.g. full authority to investigate anything coming out of their the way that an i.g. can and a special authority to conduct an investigation in the white house or anywhere else for high-level officials upon referral from oge. and that also is a mechanism that prevents abuse, because you couldn't suddenly empower oge to be in investigative body and one director is going to make decisions about when to investigate and he could have the ethics program become a political tool in that case, but having a separate i.g. who can only conduct a special investigation of the white house, upon referral to oge, it is like those old war movies

with the two guys in the missile silo who have to turn the key at the same time from across the have to means that two agree and they may have been appointed by different presidents, so that gives them protection. and the one other that i will cover briefly is my proposal for solving presidential conflict of interest. i do not think that a president should have to recuse, because i do think that we need a president to participate in everything. we cannot have a national crisis unfolding with split-second decisions having to be made and the president saying, can somebody check it out and see if i need to recuse myself, and there is nobody to give a waiver because he does not have a boss, but even if he did it is turning over the power of the executive branch. i do not know if i agree with those that say that the constitutional -- it is a constitutional problem, because congress already has a limited circumstance, but i think it is a bad idea and i think it is

dangerous in the sense that we need a president available for things, so i would like to get us back to the tradition where the presidents voluntarily take as many steps as humanly possible to resolve conflicts of interest voluntarily and one way that i came up with to do this and i proposed to congress, was require them to disclose, in writing, to the office of government ethics their plan for addressing their conflict of interest and have oge post it. that is one piece, but the key piece is that it happened before the first primary to decide who is going to be a party's nominee, because the media failed to ask the questions last fall. they failed to ask hillary clinton, what will you do with that foundation? they failed to ask donald trump, what are you going to do with all of these companies? even if they had done that in , i do nothing16

many people in the world are going to change parties over that. but if you start asking the question, when you had 16 people running for the same party's nomination, i suspect ted cruz or marco rubio or chris christie or jeb bush or john kasich or ben carson would have really thrown down with this president over his failure to come up with a plan to resolve conflict of interest, and some people might have thought, this bothers me so i will vote for this other guy who will run for my party's nomination and i do not to change parties. and so the idea is disclosure, but disclosure early enough. when the final piece of it has to be you can't amend it at any time in writing and ray release it so it becomes a race to the top, you come in to load the next candidate comes and says i will do this much more, and you take a beating at a town hall or

debate or something and come back and you re-release in even higher plan and then they compete. i wonder if that would create enough pressure to guess that the voluntary compliance with the vestige or, rather than compelling recusal. the final thing i will say is something dan said about a cutting both ways, it cuts both ways in a bigger sense, if you like contribution be concerned that maybe something else will become president and keep their complex of interest, maybe hillary clinton will run again and keep her foundation and a few years ago you are chanting, lock her up, but now you are a proven it because of donald trump aired and -- trump. and there are millionaires toying with the idea of running and no matter which party that they run for, if they come in and did they refused to resolve their conflicts of interest, then they have now sealed permanently in place the idea

that a president does not ever have to worry about their conflicts of a jurist. and if they take advantage of the fact that they can say the other guy did not do that, but they come in and do it again, make no mistake they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. so people need to hold their own party accountable and on both sides put country before party, and i think that is a challenge that we are seeing people fail now and i hope it stops, and i hope that we do not start seeing the same behavior all around. kimberly: and i want to go to dan and kathleen too about other ideas or counter ideas about solution, but keeping in mind one question that comes to mind as walter was talking, if the only way for the president is to take office, is for him to completely divest himself of all of his earnings, especially if he has a company the way that president trump does, put it in

a blind trust or other way, completely divest yourself, why would that dissuade people from running? is that too much to ask somebody to do? i want you to talk about that and also reforms as you see them. kathleen: so, i personally do not think it is too much to ask to ask a candidate for president to start putting country first. divestment or a commitment to divest does not seem like too much to me. but i also want to just come back to something that walter said, when you referred to the conflicts that the office of government ethics had with the white house in may, in the spring of 2017, i believe it was with regard to whether the white house was going to discuss or

publish and to disclose the waivers it had issued. you said that the office of government ethics did not have much power to compel. and i think that you were right, that the office of government of ethics did not have the traditional power, but what you really masterfully demonstrated is that you had soft power. i think that your interaction with the trump white house with regard to the waivers and is sort of a 2017, case study that really should be studied by students of public administration, as well as law -- >> congress. [laughter] kathleen: you not only have the commitment and the right position that the white house should disclose these waivers that pretty much showed the ethics executive order was a bit of a joke in how it was

ultimately used, but you got them to actually make these disclosures, because you shamed them into it, which is an amazing accomplishment that the office of ethics was able to shame the white house into doing the right thing. and so i want to highlight, as we think of reforms, that we need to keep in mind that, we will refer to them as guardrails, these norms rather than laws, but you're really masterful handling of that conflict is something that you deserve a lot of credit for, and also perhaps it is something that we need to look for ways to cultivate on the part of other accountability mechanisms within congresst paid daniel: -- government.

daniel: congress has used authority to ensure compliance with the law, but also to enforce written norms. past presidents, when they violated the norms, those triggered congressional investigations. so i think congress does need to have that message reinforced. i do disagree with a couple of things come although i agree with most of it and i am trembling at the thought of disagreeing with you about ethics -- [laughter] notewo things, i want to we have the longest serving federal commissioner in the is ance, and the fcc example also of the challenges that come with enforcing some of the guard rails, and also has the distention of having to readily the president, or at least the president's campaign while he is still the commissioner boss. and the fcc has its challenges, but it is doable and many

federal agencies for instance do have an enforcement division that is walled off from the rest of the agency. that tend to think that enforcement division should be more powerful, but there is a way to empower career civil servants to enforce some of the laws with oversight from the political appointees, so i do not think it is impossible for that to become oge, but i also respect your point of view as having run oge and it does not have to be within oge. [indiscernible] i think that there is something to be said for a culture of voluntary compliance and people do not know that a lot of agencies try to combine supervision with enforcement, and you know, the sort of confessor role and the enforcement role, that is a larger discussion on how well that works. of interest for the

president, that is where i disagree. i think the reality is the president is uninvolved in the vast majority of government decisions. that even from very high-profile decisions, the president is supposed to stay out of, like whether to prosecute people. i know that is not the current occupant's philosophy, although there is not necessarily an indication that that has been inspected by even his own justice department. so i just do not -- i am having trouble understanding why recusing for the president come in his own -- and his own cabinet does all the time, is such an insurmountable problem. there may be a smaller subset related to national security, for instance, or other things where it is not practical to ask the president to recuse himself, and at that point you start to look at divestment. i agree with kathleen, you become the leader of the free

world and it is a life-changing event. jimmy carter had to sell his peanut farm. he chose to, he chose to sell the farm. george h.w. bush had many business interests and he divested from them, so i do not think it is too much to ask and i think that there is a way to expect presidents to come up with a plan. and i do not think the law should micromanage with the president does, i think the president with the people advising him or her should just be responsible for doing that. the law: and why should not micromanage what the president does, and when we have proposals put forward, say their his a shift in the congress -- say there is a shift in congress ahead, say that we will put all the ethics rules down and make sure this does not happen again? what is the risk of over regulating?

daniel: one of the issues is the more you get into congress micromanaging the president's finances, i think there is concern, constitutional concerns raised. they are citizens and is subject to the rest of us. it is a broad prohibition, so i do not think there is constitutional concerns with a conflict of interest law, but i am not convinced if you are starting to have congress described with the president can and cannot do. like every other person in the government, the person -- the president should have obligation to comply and figure out how to comply. probably didter not need to sell his peanut farm, it is nice he did, maybe sad, i never asked. but i do not know that we need to force people to do that. i think that there is some truth, as you noted, of not wanting -- i [indiscernible]

if it is that bigger drag to become leader of the free world, fine, do not do it. [laughter] generally does not impact the public interest, or if there is a less burdensome way to solve the problem, then i think it is worth exploring that option. i understand the president has built a business that he is very proud of and there are parts of the business that probably could be solved by reclosable instead of the investment, and there is no reason not to let him do it if it will solve the problem. kimberly: kathleen? kathleen: i want to get into some of the nitty-gritty of the financial conflict of interest statute and dan and water may may shinet -- walter light on it and help us understand how it would apply to the president. there is some matters that are so broad in scope that they do

not, they are not even reached by the financial conflict of interest statute. back in 1990, i believe it was, george herbert walker bush's administrations sought legal opinion from the justice department office of legal counsel to find out whether the u.s. response to iraq's invasion of kuwait implicated the financial conflict statute from embers of the cabinet and others, who had a financial holdings in oil companies and the office of legal counsel, the justice department, indicated that the u.s. response to the iraqi invasion of kuwait was so broad in scope that the financial conflict of interest statute was irrelevant. it did not have to be considered by the cabinet members. and so what i want to flag is the possibility that it may be that most of what a president does is so broad in scope that

the financial conflict statute has no implication at all to policy proposals and decisions. i will to you of the president is getting involved in prosecution decisions, that is narrow enough that it is absolutely that the financial conflict of statute should apply. but the president should not be involved in prosecution decisions. so i would be interested in hearing from dan and walt on whether you have a handle on what percentage of the president's actual activities are likely to implicate the financial conflict statute that applies to the president? walter: since we have an audience with a wide range of backgrounds i will try to stay high level, but wheone of my concerns is section 208, is that

208 is a very blunt instrument that is at once overbroad and too narrow. as you said, there are some types of things that are covered by it and some that are not, and it is the difference between a matter, whatever that is, is not covered and a particular matter is covered. and finding the line between the matter in a particular matter, what makes a particular enough, the definition is a matter that is focused on the interests of a discrete and identifiable class of persons or parties, but in prodigal application there are people who spend -- practical application there are people who spend all day trying to find out what is a particular matter and where is the line between matter and particular matter, so some party matters are very narrow, like litigation, like the prosecution that you mentioned. but others are broader, for

instance regulation affecting any industry, if it affects just one industry the members of that industry are identifiable. so you get into a debate about whether new regulations for opinion,this is an -- would be a particular matter. some people are arguing that all consumers in the world are not an identical -- identifiable class of persons, but the decision was it focuses on the interest of the manufacturer, so it is. that is a relatively clear-cut example. tickets really weird -- it gets really weird at oge, because there is a more difficult question filtering of the way pyramid of 3500 -- 4500 agencies. we have all the most confusing, vague, right on the edge of the line, to the point where the staff would lose faith in to

say, does any of this mean anything, because it could be one way or the other. i would remind them that 80% of the time it makes a sense but we are dealing with high-level officials involved in unusual things and we're living in the 20% where it is vague and probably more like the 5% where it turns into quantum mechanics. part of the problem is the temptation that exists with the president who is behaving, who is in the public eye more than any other government official, to -- there would be great pressure to define that so narrowly, anytime there was a debate the white house would come out with detailed explanations of why it is not a particular matter and it would probably co-op the department of hocl counsel to do a post rationalization on what the president did is ok, and it then it started gutting it for

everybody else, so i worry at that top level the vagaries can be exploited by a president, and then ultimately undermine the law that applies to everybody else, the same law that applies to them. and i could give you examples, but i would wind up confusing justf and you, because we had had constant debates. including for instance, after inut 2007 or 2008, we worked the department of justice and they concluded that a trade negotiation between two countries is not automatically a particular matter, even though there are two parties, meaning the countries, because they are whole countries and you have to look at the subject matter and how it affects all aspects of the economy or a number of different sectors, so it is not a particular matter, even though the thing that an individual government employee may work on is affecting only one industry. so a president could not manipulate trade negotiations to

his or her benefit and not be covered by this particular statute, where in other areas they are overly covered because of the broad reach of that section. so it is too broad and to narrow. recusaltute requiring only addresses conflict of interest in the sense that a conflict of interest might influence your decision making, so you stay out of the matter, you recuse yourself and therefore the result of the conflict of interest, but it does not get that efforts to curry favor with the president by funneling money to them, which we see with people being willing to pay double the membership fee over the past year at mar-a-lago, or the d.c. trump international hotel making a profit in its first year when it was expected to lose money, not because it filled every room, but because the people who want to be there, to rub elbows with white house officials who hang out there, or the president

who makes appearances there, are willing to pay well above the market rate for the same rooms. so you have the danger of buying access or carrying favor, in addition to conflict of interest, and that is why among reasons, including the technical reason about that image in my due to legal interpretation, i do not think recusal and is subjecting the president of the normal recusal statute is the best option. the two options i think a really more realistic is that divestiture statute, because the conflict of interest statute is meaning that you have to divest things, but divestiture in stronger medicine and is so you would have more exceptions for the president and i could live with that, but i still think the better thing is to turn us back as a culture to voluntary compliance by reinjected into the political process at a point when people do not have to

switch parties, because a lot flows from the behavior of the president. when intransigent has a disinterest in government interest, it undermines government officials' faith in government and it tempts them to misbehave, because if my boss can do it, why would i be held to a higher level standard then my boss? the higher up you go, the stricter the rules should be. if my boss can engage in conflicts of interest and misuse his position to advertise his properties, why should i, who has some much less authority, behave? that becomes the thinking that starts corrupting government at all levels. and so if we can get back to being a country that is a model for all the rest of the world, we see delegation coming to oge to study our system, i do not think they admire us anymore, and we will not give there is necessarily by

legislation as much as i think, or at least as comprehensively as we would by creating an environment where people feel pressure to do the right thing. i do think you have to knowledge -- daniel: you alluded to this, there is a bill u -- bell unringing problem. it would be nice to get back the norms of george h.w. bush and that would be great. i do not know if anybody has a solid idea of how to do that. and i think that the law is not a perfect substitute, but perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. i happen to think that the brennan center has proposed a public of interest law to the president, we have also proposed exceptions we think would be appropriate for the president and there may be others. i think that when the president signs legislation that should be

accepted from the conflict statute, because the president's rule is indispensable and he or she cannot do anything without congress, so i think that function should not give rise to conflict. i think the materiality threshold, we consider it not relevant, which a lot of states have in their conflict regimes, which might also be appropriate. but i think the devil is in the details. if we just say we have to get back to these norms, i am not sure in an era of hyper polarization, where people are very loyal to their party, i am not sure it will happen. kimberly: i want to say that we will go to questions pretty soon, so if you have one we have a microphone set up right over here and i think that we could also pass it, if that is better as well, so just think of -- we also have, sorry, we have one on either side.

so just think of that and you can go to the microphones to ask your question. i will ask one more, as a newspaper reporter i think about not just the president but other people and whether there are reforms needed there. can you talk about other people? should we be concerned about you ivanka trump traveling to china when she has patent deals there? going to the middle east, jared kushner? who else should we be worried about? >> i think that stems from the nepotism that was brought into it isite house, because so uncommon for white house officials to retain as many assets as they retained, but nobody in the white house was willing to lean on them as hard as other officials, because

these were the president's own relatives. walter: so i think that we have a nepotism problem, but i think we do not see other people are retaining that level of financial interest. but i do think the concern that dan and kathleen expressed about privately held companies, that i agree with, is universally applicable to everyone. gap, and ingerous think it makes sense to treat at least family privately held companies, or maybe possibly privately held companies, differently than publicly traded companies. kimberly: kathleen? kathleen: i think that is a really key reform. and this came up actually a few months ago, when there were news stories related to, that were referred to as the paradise papers, and secretary of commerce and a member of

congress who had been involved in the confirmation process, i believe, did not realize the secretary of commerce was he essentially in business with russian oligarchs and putin's son in law. he did not realize that because that information was not in the disclosure forms, however if congress wilere to clarify and propose and get adopted, enhanced this global or -- disclosure obligations, then others would not do justice s,ose their ownership of llc' but the key customers and their financial relationships with those llc's, so that both the conflict of interest, vetting people within the executive branch, and the congress and the senate would have access to information that they need. daniel: there is one dimension

of this, and kathleen you have written eloquently about this, is there is a temptation every time that you have -- after watergate for instance, to have ethics reform, which is why the attorney at doj, do not get a drink with somebody who will buy it for you because you may have run afoul of some role -- rule. i do think that we need to be mindful of the fact that ordinary, federal employees are regulated already and this is a situation that calls for targeted solutions and thoughtful solutions, and possibly more to do with the machinery of enforcement with oge, then it does with a wave of ethics reform that will impose more restrictions on every low-level government employee. and something i can do by reading your scholarship and i think it is an important point to keep in mind. kathleen: thank you.

raret to acknowledge how it is for scholarship to have any kind of impact that all. [laughter] aniel: i have to agree that that is a really good point. we need smart reforms. walter: right now a staff attorney at epa could not go on a pro bono basis, helping a veteran who needs help with the social security administration, or the v.a., because there is a criminal conduct of interest statute that intends -- that applies to the entire government. so i have never liked that application where it is just or agencies you have influence over, so i think we have to be careful that there could be a wave of reforms where people think more is more and they slather on a solution that is like a sledgehammer when a scalpel is needed. kimberly: we have a question

right here. >> thank you. [indiscernible] i would really like to begin by thanking you -- and you inspire many of us in the room. really falling on what kathleen said about the whole issue of llc's. it is not just really the llc's that are in the financial disclosure forms, you really cannot understand the liabilities. we have seen articles in buzz feed last week and usa today which really points out that the majority of the trump organization's real estate sales have been through these secretive companies, especially in the time since he became president, and we do not understand really who the true beneficial owner is behind the company's, and we do not

know who is try to buy influence. one, that sense, number with a better disclosure help? and is disclosure enough? i am beginning to think after listening to you that divesting completely is the answer, given all these questions. kimberly: go ahead, you can start kathleen. kathleen: the buzz feed articles and usa today are about these transactions, really they identify a key problem that affects us in terms of government ethics, and it is a much broader problem societywide in the united states, regarding the lack of transparency with regard to real estate transactions in particular, not just llc's, for the potential for money laundering and so on. so i guess -- well, i absolutely think that we need to be cautious about layering on

additional government ethics standards, because more is not always better. ofill say that this area real estate transactions and the lack of transparency with regard to llc's generally, not just in regard to government officials, is a really key problem that we need action on. walter: i think that is right. i have not heard any proposals from anyone that would require a company to disclose its customers, so i am not sure there is a proposal out there that would get at this, yet as you point out it is a very serious problem that we do not paying marketre rate or above, or what it is actually worth. and this is again going back to my concern that i do not know if you solve the palo with that divestiture, because you have so much potential for things to flow to a president,

particularly through these privately held companies. i would be less worried if they held stock in gm, and gm was selling off assets and property. i do not know if i feel the need to know who they are selling them off to, because it is a big enough company that i do not think decisions are being made to benefit a president, but these privately held companies that he holds are selling to privately held companies that have obscured the buyer and you already have, the articles you mentioned, and i think that people -- i did not say it getting as much coverage as it group released a report on money laundering activities and i do not think that they ever alleged that he was personally involved in the money laundering, but that this was going on in these types of businesses seems to be the implication of the report. now we have a president who is at least adjacent to this activity and it makes him the

honorable to blackmail -- him vulnerable to blackmail, and we have no way to gather the information because the privately held companies are not required to disclose it. [indiscernible] >> i just wanted to ask one point -- knowing kimberly: very quickly, one point. >> there are bills in congress that address anonymous funding, and secondly the real estate estate,cquiring real the companies, agents and otherwise, it is due diligence so it does not require an act of congress. aniel: two things, one is the centerblem, the brennan is based in new york and the llc's are essential to the crisis of corruption in new york, they were subject of several scandals.

i believe in transparency and i do think that some combination of transparency rules and recusal rules can be effective. i want to come back to not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. i do not think that transparency is meaningless, i think it can make a difference. kimberly: my fault for not saying that the questioner should say who your name is -- what your name is and make it a one-point question. >> my name is bill and i actually have two questions. one is easy, the office of government ethics renders opinions, are the compulsory or voluntary to follow? can somebody explain the rationale the gsa decisions to allow the top organization to maintain the tenant agreement at the post office department? >> the first is a lot easier than the second. walter: oge's opinions are interpretive, so it is not a matter of compulsory or not,

they are taking the position means,is is what the law at least in terms of legal opinions. it also issues program advisories where he gives and ittions to agencies has taken the position that he can direct agencies to do things, like produce documents or change the way that they track things, or we recently required them to start using the electronic financial disclosure system, unless they applied for a waiver to that. but in terms of the legal opinions, those are interpretive and oge coordinates with the department of justice when it involves the criminal statutes. bind theannot department of justice, so they could still prosecute somebody, but you could talk a prosecutor out of prosecuting if you said i relied on this opinion, and so as a practical matter they have the effect of being

compulsory, because they are your best guidance on what the law is, but they are not written as orders to go and do something. question,on the gsa regarding the interpretation of the lease for the trump hotel, t he interpretation is nonsensical. [laughter] >> that is a good word for it. kathleen: i would like to acknowledge the decision was not actually, it was not actually written by a lawyer, it was written by a contracting official. i want to emphasize the non-sensibility of it would not depend on a law degree or any kind of legal education, but on the other hand i am intrigued by the fact that it wasn't, i mean, i am a teacher of legal ethics so perhaps for that reason i am a treat by the fact it was not touched -- i am intrigued by the fact it was not touched by a

lawyer but written by a contract officer. did said the president would not benefit from the lease, because he will not actually receive the benefit until after he leaves office, but to suggest that is not a benefit is nonsensical. daniel: i am math illiterate, completely and finance butterate too, god help me, even i know what a capital account is and i know because just because you do not take distributions does not mean it is not years -- yours. if the profits are going into his capital account, the account is going up in basically because the money would not actually go out until after he leaves office, he was not benefiting. walter: and it is not only nonsensical it is surly, it really mocks what it takes if the black and white reading of the very plainly glitch -- plain

language. shortly before the inauguration, gsa was issuing press statements saying that oge decides ethical issues and not us, and i got so mad that they were putting the press on is over this, i said, if you want us to make that decision i will do it today, so unless you're ready to make the decision stop issuing these press releases that we have control over this outcome, because if i have control over it i know what i will decide. and they changed their press a statement. kimberly: go ahead. >> thank you for your presentation. rule,hinking that ethics apply to the current president, and [indiscernible] i am thinking for all professions, if they are you responsible -- and their operating outside ethic rule,

they should be prosecuted too. is there anything in our government, that a professional especially, that the doj, if they do not prosecute the right person, that means that they are benefiting, indirectly, so that to me is a violation of the ethics rules. is there anything that somewhere say itcan speak up and needs to stop? walter: i think that your sentiment is right, that this should stop, but unfortunately or fortunately, it is the difference between common sense efflux and -- ethics and the legal statutes that create a framework for ethics, and unless there is a specific criminal law you have violated you cannot be prosecuted. interestingly, this administration itself

acknowledged the concept in a letter that mick mulvaney issued after secretary price lost his job for horsing around on luxury jets. said,ey had a line that just because it is legal does not mean it is right. and i almost killed over laughing -- keeled over laughing, because this is what i was saying to the administration all along and they were telling me i was out of line. answer isaybe the just because somebody is not going to be prosecuted, does not mean the behavior is acceptable. and i meant to say this earlier with something else, but i think it relates here with regard to prosecution, because one of the areas we have seen the norms breakdown is with the president interfering in the department of justice, whether it is interviewing applicants for the districts he has properties in, or having the white house counsel go out to find out if

there is a secret award, or calling for the prosecution of , there is a- um real susceptibility to political influence in prosecution in our country, so i think that we benefit from this line where you cannot be prosecuted just because it is wrong, you have to actually violate any statute, because the potential for abuse in the other direction would be terrible, because then the president is in charge and he can decide who he does not like and have a cnn anchor prosecutor because he asked a hard question. interestingly though, in the is part mid 2000's, oge of the anticorruption mechanisms internationally into some of them do reviews of each other's countries, and the feedback that the u.s. kept getting was

prosecutors do not have enough independence in our country and are too vulnerable to political influence. at the time it made no sense to me and i thought it sounded crazy, but i think we now see what they were talking about when the international community was expressing concern that the criminal investigative apparatus of our country could be abused for political reasons, because these prosecutors reports of political appointees and ultimately to the president. so i think we want to be careful not to go necessarily beyond the balance of law when it comes to imposing punishments, but in terms of demanding that people live up to the ethical traditions, i do not think that is too much to ask. kimberly: i want to get to the next question, a quick question if you can. >> i am a reporter with fc w. are there to set the rules for the bureaucracy and politicos in the white house? what concerns do you have for how long this sort of way the

trump administration operates ethically trickles down to procurement officers or lower-level government employees? walter: there are two sets of rules, but the good news is there are rules that apply to everybody and there are additional rules that apply to the higher level appointees. so while the president and vice president are exempt, political appointees have all the normal rules, plus some things like a and sooutside income, that is ok. i do not think we have this problem, except for the president and vice president being exempted from statutes. in terms of individual procurement officials, i think i still have confidence that all of the normal apparatuses in place for the career level employees are so far holding with no indication of change. there is a workforce of millions of people and you will always have the occasional bad egg, but

so far i have not spread -- i have not seen widespread -- to the level of violated procurement rules. you can have protests and there is enforcement mechanisms where the injured parties can hold the government accountable and undo a contract. but i think that is, unfortunately one of the most sinister things is the phrase deep state, because what they're calling deep state are the people who have a firm belief in the rule of law and the integrity of the government, like procurement officials, who are not going to obey instructions from above to take paper kermit, but who will instead insist on the normal rules. if you are fans of the office, like michael scott complaining about toby being the wet blanket into saying that we have rules. i think that denigrates what is

actually one of the best things about a government, is that we have people who no matter what are going to follow the rules, even if their bosses are pushing otherwise. kathleen: i want to underscore something that you said earlier. when you are talking about the pressure that would be placed on the justice department to interpret the financial conflict statute in a really lacks way, if it applied to the president. we have seen that dynamic, we have seen it with regard to this current interpretation of the foreign emoluments clause. because the justice department has taken a strong line, up until the trump administration, that the clause absolutely prohibits for value exchanges between a government official and a foreign government, prohibiting the u.s. official from receiving compensation for services provided. no indication it is just limited to gifts, but now in litigation the justice department, now that the clause is being in

litigation and at issue, it interprets the emoluments clause more nearly than it has before, so that it wouldn't apply to for value exchanges with government officials, and that is not limited to the president, that weakens the clause as enter but about the justice department to all federal officials. daniel: that illustrates one of the things in our report, that the justice department in particular i do not think is the best enforcer of these roles. this is why i think that you need an independent ethics a -- theor, not just justice department is not well-suited for this. kimberly: we have a couple minutes, you get our last question. >> from the brennan center for justice, i will pick up on this servedecause having agencies and having witnessed, or should i say having heard of

these conversations that contracting officers designating the ethics that they participate in, that their bosses can get uncomfortable to say the least at times and that is one of the reasons i am glad that you mentioned the private jet cabinet members, i am wondering if you think it is important or if you thought about additional protections, may be something along the lines of what was mentioned for the director of oge, to apply to those folks at executive branch agencies who are actually looked upon to improve -- approve actions taken by senior officers or certify their actions, that those officials then use as cover when justifying why they did what they did. onesr: that is a nice new -- nuance and i do not think it has trickled down to where procurement decisions are affected. procurement decisions are the

very last thing effective because private companies can sue if they get cheated out of a contract bid. but at the other end of the spectrum you have rules in which there is no oversight or consequence, and really gave the good example, the travel rules have subjective requirements and career officials in the lower level appointees work together to come up with these decisions, saying it is ok to take this the distanceer jet from washington dc to finland, even though you have to drive an hour to the airport and the drive is only 2.5 hours, so we could save money by sending you them by an uber. so we have seen some corrupting influence, because these people assume that they operate in darkness. my group filed a foia request for gsa for the travel reports on because all agencies are required to file them and gsa

give the sleaziest response, they said, you have to request it from each of the agencies, even though we haven't all here, and denied the request. it was despicable. so i think that these people that they were going to operate in darkness, and then a couple of reporters from politico, they were sticking out in airport and caught secretary price, and suddenly these decisions are exposed to the public and now to agencies have said that the documentation is in adequate and these people just said, yes, i think it meets the standard, and they just -- in the standard without justifying it. so i think there is real danger for that. i even saw a distinction among somethics officials where stood their ground and tried to apply the same standards to these incoming appointees, who had gotten the message that ethics does not matter. and others just cave like what

ever i cannot think of a good analogy, whatever caves. [laughter] and i found myself having to give them pep talks or snarls, orbiting my fists, whatever i them do to beg and plead to hold these folks to the same standards that they held people in the bush because they were so intimidated by a perceived closeness of a group of people who asked the department of energy to provide a list of everyone who had worked on climate change issues and feared retaliation. i think to answer your question, it would be nice if there were more protections along the lines of whistleblower type protections, and i do not have my mind around exactly how we would enforce it. one way might be for each , createal requirement

some transparency provision so that police are not operating in darkness. proposed toat i congress was just to have gsa post all of these travel reports on its website and require a little bit more information to be put in there, like why did you choose a charter jet as opposed to a first-class ticket. is to look for enforcement mechanisms or at least transparency mechanisms. >> one of the accountability mechanisms that could come into play here, is whistleblower protection. from an officials disclosure that such a proposed form violates the ethics standards, could well qualify for protection under the whistleblower protection act. that is one of the things i think we need to look for is to make sure that there are such protections. there are actual whistleblowers that we have seen that

continues. >> the last word is yours if you want it. >> we are wrapping up. against of all, i want to thank my co-panelists on behalf of the britain center for participating in this. i think it was a really wonderful session. building off of that, i want to say two things. one is that these issues that have come up with this administration are not related. whistleblower protection, ethics, limits on presidential power, it is important to think of it as a holistic package. one of the things that is going to be a challenge for people in to,years ahead is trying like the dam that sprouts many tacklefigure out how to the whole as opposed to its

various constituent parts. there is a silo in your tendency that i think people are going to have to fight against. the second thing i want to emphasize is that we at the brennan center are committed to the perfect cannot be the animate -- enemy of the good. you have to factor in that nothing is going to solve all of these problems, but at the same time, you can make progress. the last thing i'm going to say is that again, a lot of this discussion has been about president trump, that is true, more, our democracy is bigger than any one public official. these are rules that are going to be with us long after this president is gone and the next president as well. can think about what is in our country's long-term interest and divorce it from anger at what you might perceive as the particular excesses of this administration, i think the

better. >> on behalf of the brennan center for justice at nyu here in d.c., i would like to thank all of you here in d.c. for joining us live in the audience as well as those of us who joined us via livestream or vse's -- c-span. ask you here to join me in thanking them. [applause] journal"'s "washington live every day with issues that impact you. coming up wednesday morning, the

president's conflicts of interest. then, we are live from the d.c. convention center for the 2018 autoshow. we will discuss the future of automotive and rideshare services. the issues facing lawmakers in the autoshow industry. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7 a.m. eastern wednesday morning. join the discussion. thursday, former secretaries ofstate and former secretary state testified before the senate services committee about national security strategy. see live coverage at 10:00 a.m. here on c-span.

president trump arrives in switzerland on thursday and friday he addresses the world economic forum and obvious -- davos. he is the first sitting president to approach the conference since president clinton. "afterward."ht on the book "the new american revolution." she is interviewed by matt lewis. >> i had conservatives say to me why do you use this word. to me, it sums up what this book is about. it is the people. i really wanted to honestly profile the people on the left and on the right. most of the voters i profiled were trump voters, but i did profile some who were not.