Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest
Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest are situations in which an official acts in an official capacity on matters that materially affect their personal financial interests, without recusing or disclosing as the law requires. Concrete forms include voting on or shaping policy that benefits a personally owned company, granting permits or licenses to ventures in which the official has an undisclosed stake, and directing agency action that bears on a family member's business. Disclosure and recusal regimes exist precisely to make this category manageable; failures of disclosure are the abuse.
2026 Events (6)
White House pushed to delay hemp ban while Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' son-in-law stood to profit
The White House pushed Congress to delay a federal ban on intoxicating hemp products days before it was set to take effect, reversing course on a law President Trump signed in November 2025. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' son-in-law, Bret Worley, is CEO of MC Nutraceuticals, a hemp-derived product manufacturer that lobbied allies to seek the same delay; the White House denies Wiles was involved. The push, reported August 6, 2026, drew objections from Republican senators including Ted Budd and Tom Cotton.
Trump misses STOCK Act 45-day deadline; OGE fines him twice for late stock-trade disclosures
A May 15, 2026 Washington Post analysis of financial-disclosure forms the U.S. Office of Government Ethics released the prior day reported that President Donald Trump missed the 45-day filing deadline the STOCK Act imposes on covered securities transactions, and that OGE assessed him $200 fines on two separate occasions for failing to report stock trades on time. The late filings include a February 10, 2026 Nvidia purchase made days before a market-moving Meta–Nvidia deal that lifted Nvidia shares roughly 2.5 percent, and $5 million–$25 million each in Microsoft and Amazon sold in February and repurchased in March shortly before the Pentagon announced plans to deploy Microsoft and Amazon technology in classified computer networks.
Interior official Karen Budd-Falen worked on federal grazing rules benefiting her family's ranches despite a signed recusal
On May 9, 2026, The Washington Post reported that Karen Budd-Falen, the Interior Department's third-ranking official, had acknowledged working on relaxed federal grazing regulations — including a categorical exclusion easing grazing-permit approvals — that benefit her family's cattle operations and federal grazing allotments across roughly a quarter-million acres of Bureau of Land Management land. Budd-Falen had signed a 2018 recusal from grazing matters, but the Interior Department issued her an ethics waiver on March 11, 2026 permitting her to work on matters affecting her financial interests. The watchdog Campaign for Accountability and congressional Democrats asked Interior's Inspector General and congressional committees to investigate the conflict.
EPA methane chief secretly authored oil industry's case against the rules he now rewrites
ProPublica revealed on April 1, 2026 that Aaron Szabo, the EPA assistant administrator leading the rollback of federal methane-emissions rules, was the unnamed author of the oil industry's January 2022 comment letter against those same rules, written while he was a registered lobbyist for an industry member. Now overseeing the rewrite at EPA, Szabo has solicited input and specific regulatory language from the industry groups that stand to benefit.
Justice Alito declined to recuse from Supreme Court's Suncor climate case cert grant despite fossil-fuel holdings and past recusals
On February 23, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, agreeing to review whether federal law bars local governments from suing fossil-fuel companies over climate damages; Justice Samuel Alito participated in that decision rather than recusing. Alito holds up to $15,000 in ConocoPhillips stock and $15,000–$50,000 in Phillips 66 stock — both companies are defendants in parallel climate suits the Boulder case would help decide — plus a fund whose third-largest holding is ExxonMobil, a named party, and he had recused from an earlier petition in the same Boulder litigation and from a related 2025 petition on the same issue. A Supreme Court spokeswoman told NBC News in May 2026 that Alito's holdings do not include Suncor or ExxonMobil directly and that his earlier recusal had been inadvertent.
Deputy Defense Secretary Feinberg amended his ethics agreement to keep receiving Cerberus services indefinitely
On January 6, 2026, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg signed a letter amending his February 2025 ethics agreement to extend, indefinitely, his arrangement to keep receiving tax, accounting, and health-care services from Cerberus Capital Management, the private-equity firm he founded and led until his 2025 appointment; DOD's ethics office transmitted the amendment to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics the next day, finding him still in compliance. The amendment went unnoticed publicly until ProPublica's March 8, 2026 disclosure-records investigation revealed it and connected it to the Pentagon's Golden Dome missile-defense program, which Feinberg oversees and which has awarded contracts to at least four Cerberus-owned companies.
2025 Events (5)
FCC Chair Carr and Commissioner Trusty accepted Kennedy Center gala seats amid pending Paramount merger review
On December 7, 2025, FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty attended the Kennedy Center Honors gala while Paramount's mergers were before the commission. Trusty accepted tickets worth more than $12,000 that ProPublica confirmed came from Paramount; Carr sat in a private $125,000 skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison, though the source of his seat was unconfirmed pending his outstanding financial disclosure. Both had voted five months earlier to approve Paramount's $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, and neither had recused from the company's pending $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Executive Office of the President signed a White House ballroom donor contract shielding donors and exempting conflict-of-interest rules
On October 8, 2025, the White House, the National Park Service, and the Trust for the National Mall signed a contract governing hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations for President Trump's planned $400 million White House ballroom. The agreement bars disclosure of anonymous donors' identities and excludes the president and White House officials from the conflict-of-interest review it applies to the Park Service and Interior Department. The contract was not disclosed publicly until The Washington Post obtained it in April 2026, after the watchdog group Public Citizen sued and a judge ordered its release.
Stephen Miller held up to $250,000 in stock in ICE contractor Palantir while directing the deportation buildup
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and homeland security advisor, disclosed on June 24, 2025 holding between $100,001 and $250,000 in stock in Palantir Technologies, an ICE contractor, according to a POGO investigation. The stock was acquired after his first Trump term and held in a child's brokerage account, which does not exempt it under federal conflict-of-interest law.
State Department pressed tariff-threatened nations to approve Musk's Starlink, cables showed
Internal U.S. embassy and State Department cables obtained by The Washington Post and reported on May 7, 2025, showed officials repeatedly pressing foreign governments facing Trump administration tariff threats to approve regulatory access for Starlink, the satellite company owned by White House adviser Elon Musk. Lesotho received a 10-year Starlink license two weeks after Trump announced 50% tariffs, and India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo saw similar fast-tracked approvals. Eleven U.S. senators subsequently requested a federal ethics investigation into the arrangement.
Deputy AG Todd Blanche shut down DOJ crypto enforcement while holding up to $485,000 in personal crypto investments
On April 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a DOJ memo, "Ending Regulation by Prosecution," scaling back Biden-era cryptocurrency enforcement and disbanding the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. A ProPublica investigation found Blanche personally held between $159,000 and $485,000 in crypto-related assets at the time, despite pledging in February 2025 to divest "as soon as practicable"; he did not begin selling or transferring the holdings until nearly two months after the memo, in late May and early June 2025.