Elizabeth Warren Picked a Good Day to Talk About Corruption
In a speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled a bill that would dramatically overhaul the way Washington D.C. does business—cracking down on lobbyists and special interest groups, embracing tightened ethics restrictions on elected officials and judges, and subjecting people to something actually resembling transparency. As it turned out, she chose a pretty good day to do this, since, by the end of the night:
- President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager had been convicted on eight counts of felony bank and tax fraud.
- His former lawyer had pleaded guilty to eight felonies and heavily implied in open court that Trump had directed him to break campaign finance laws.
- And the second member of Congress to endorse Trump was indicted along with his wife on charges that they spent over a quarter of a million in campaign funds on personal expenses and committed wire fraud—which itself is in addition to the first member of Congress to endorse Trump being indicted for insider trading earlier this month.
Warren’s 289-page bill, called the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, has six distinct parts. It would ban individual stock ownership by elected officials, judges, and senior agency and congressional staffers; impose a lifetime ban on lobbying by all federally elected officials and judges, as well as cabinet secretaries; and create a new United States Office of Public Integrity to investigate and enforce ethics violations, as well as a U.S. Public Advocate.