On Friday, March 21, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) related to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging the purchase of Tesla stock on March 19th.
CLC is a nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the challenges facing American democracy. Its mission is to fight for every American’s freedom to vote and participate meaningfully in the democratic process, particularly Americans who have faced political barriers because of race, ethnicity, or economic status.
In an appearance on Fox News this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick encouraged viewers to buy stock in Tesla, the car company owned by Elon Musk, a “special government employee” advising the president and a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader.
The CLC complaint states the following:
“Campaign Legal Center (“CLC”) respectfully requests that the Office of Government Ethics (“OGE”) and the Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) investigate whether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick violated the federal ban on government officials using their public positions for private gain. Specifically, on March 19, 2025, Secretary Lutnick appeared on a national television news program in his official capacity and told viewers to purchase Tesla stock.1 Public officials are prohibited from promoting any “product, service, or enterprise,” and Secretary Lutnick’s actions require an investigation of this apparently flagrant violation of federal law.
The ethics laws that prohibit using public office for private gain exist to hold public officials accountable to their responsibility of serving the public good. No public good is served when a cabinet official acts as an influencer promoting a company’s stock. If senior officials in the executive branch are allowed to blatantly ignore ethics laws without consequence, it decreases public trust in our institutions. It is therefore imperative that OGE and Commerce investigate whether Secretary Lutnick improperly used his position to promote Tesla stock.”
Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel, and senior director for ethics at Campaign Legal Center, issued the following statement:
“The president’s Cabinet members take an oath to serve the American people, and with that oath comes the ability and privilege to exercise a vast amount of power. Such power is intended to promote the public interest and is legally barred from promoting personal business interests.
Secretary Lutnick’s actions violate the ethics rules that were enacted to hold public officials accountable to the American people. His statement is part of a pattern of behavior showing that Trump’s indifference to ethics is trickling down to his most senior officials.
The American people deserve a government that prioritizes public good. Most people will conclude that promoting a stock is not tied to any public good, and ethics laws agree. The Office of Government Ethics and Commerce ethics officials should hold Lutnick accountable and reassure the public that their officials will face consequences if they use their public office to enrich themselves or their allies.”
Federal Ethics Laws clearly prohibit executive branch employees from promoting any company in their official capacity.
Section 5 C.F.R. § 2635.702 states that “employees may not use their public office for their own private gain; [or] for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise.” Specifically, the law provides that “employees may not use or permit the use of their Government position or title or any authority associated with their public office to endorse any product, service or enterprise” with two narrow exceptions.
One exception to the rule is if an official offers an endorsement “in furtherance of statutory authority to promote products, services, or enterprises.” The second exception is if the endorsement is the “result of documentation of compliance with agency requirements or standards or as the result of recognition for achievement given under an agency program of recognition for accomplishment in support of the agency’s mission.”
Since President Trump recently removed the director of the Office of Government Ethics, David Huitema, who was appointed during the Biden administration, and replaced him with Doug Collins, a former Republican Congressman, critics argue that these changes could undermine its ability to hold officials accountable. Complaints such as the one filed by CLC’s are less likely to be adjudicated in impartially.
This is unfortunate since the OGE's mission is to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure ethical conduct, and its effectiveness depends on its leadership's commitment to impartiality.
Despite the possibility that CLC’s complaint won’t be adjudicated impartially it is critical to have complaints such as this one filed so that the public is aware of the seriousness of these potential ethics violations.
Ethical behavior ensures that public officials act with integrity, making decisions in the people's best interest rather than for personal gain. Without ethical conduct, trust erodes, and the legitimacy of democratic governance is undermined.
The very foundation of our democracy relies on citizens having confidence in their leaders and institutions.
To read the full complaint, click HERE.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.