March 17, 2025

Warren, Raskin, Blumenthal, Lawmakers Push White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Trump Administration Corruption

Given Concerns, Warren, Blumenthal, Van Hollen Also Push for Investigations of Elon Musk’s Potential Ethics Violations and VA Secretary Doug Collins Also Serving as Acting Director of Federal Ethics Office

“Despite President Trump’s promises to fight for working families, he has appointed a string of corporate billionaires and industry insiders, putting them in positions to enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary Americans.”

Text of Letter to Wiles (PDF) | Text of Letters to Investigators (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), along with House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), sent White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles a 10-page letter sounding the alarm on the overwhelming corruption and vast conflicts of interest throughout the Trump administration. 

This comes just days after President Donald Trump joined Elon Musk to make what appeared to be a sales pitch for Teslas on the White House lawn. 

This letter was sent along with two additional letters from Senators Warren, Blumenthal, and Van Hollen urging 1) the Department of Justice and Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General to determine whether Elon Musk has broken ethics rules through his possible involvement in the Federal Aviation Administration’s work with Starlink, despite his financial interest in the work, and 2) the Government Accountability Office to determine whether Doug Collins’s competing responsibilities as both Acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs is undermining the work of either OGE or the VA.

“One month into President Trump’s second term, his new administration is already beating his earlier record of corruption,” wrote the lawmakers.

Within the first 50 days of his second term, President Trump has:

  • Appointed former lobbyists, billionaire chief executive officers (CEOs), and stockholders with a direct financial stake in their own policy work. 

  • Ceded power to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

  • Maintained his network of foreign real estate ventures and refused to divest from his maze of business interests.

  • Attempted to fire at least 17 Inspectors General who were working to root out corruption in federal agencies and fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC).

  • Become the first president in history to fire the director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), the primary office responsible for mitigating conflicts of interest in the executive branch.

At the start of his last term, he released an executive order requiring appointees to agree to an ethics pledge. Now, Trump has still not issued any such pledge — though the past three presidential administrations did so.

“Even now, it is not too late for President Trump to reverse course and put our national interests ahead of his personal dealings,” continued the lawmakers.

The members of Congress urged President Trump to take the following steps to not just pay lip service to “draining the swamp” and to remediate the Administration’s worst signs of corruption: 

  1. Reinstate the government watchdogs who President Trump purportedly fired, including all Inspectors General, the OGE Director, and the OSC Director, and commit to protecting those offices from further political interference.

  2. Thoroughly vet potential nominees for all conflicts of interest and refuse to appoint anyone who would enter with clear conflicts that existing recusal and divestment rules alone cannot resolve. 

  3. Promptly issue an ethics pledge that is at least as robust as the Biden ethics pledge or President Trump’s own pledge from 2017, and ensure robust enforcement.

  4. Divest from his business holdings, in this case by either liquidating the Trump Organization assets or placing them in a truly blind trust operated by an independent trustee who is instructed to divest the assets and reinvest the proceeds in other holdings so that the President does not know what the trust contains. He should also disclose his tax returns from the past three years.

  5. Revoke Mr. Musk’s power to profit from his efforts to manipulate the executive branch for his own benefit. Mr. Musk should also be required to promptly release his financial disclosure form so that the public can understand his potential conflicts of interest.

“The American people deserve a presidential administration that governs exclusively in the public’s interest,” concluded the lawmakers. 

The lawmakers requested that the White House respond regarding its intention to take action on these concerns by March 31, 2025.

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