Trump Rescinds Biden-Era Ethics Pledge, RFK Jr. Disclosures Released
- January 22, 2025
Maaisha Osman, Inside Health Policy
Biden’s “Executive Order on Ethic Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel,” now rescinded, required new appointees to, among other provisions, commit to a two-year prohibition on lobbying after leaving government, to not accepting gifts from registered lobbyists and to not participating in regulatory matters involving former employers for two years after their appointment. During Trump’s last administration, he issued an executive order on ethics commitment that included a federal employee pledge to not engage in lobbying activities within five years after termination of the position. It also included not accepting gifts from registered lobbyists for the duration of the position.
Similar to Biden’s executive order, Trump’s 2017 pledge required appointees to refrain from participating in matters directly tied to their former employers or clients for a period of two years.
It also imposed additional limits on former registered lobbyists, prohibiting them from engaging in any regulatory matter they lobbied on within the two years prior to their appointment.
“Typically, each new administration issues their own ethics pledge via executive order, which would bind all new executive branch appointees moving forward to the ethics requirements in the new pledge,” Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, told IHP. “President Trump has not yet issued his own ethics pledge executive order. All incoming appointees would still be bound by other federal ethics laws, but not the enhanced ethics measures typically found in an ethics pledge.”