The director of the federal Office of Government Ethics on Saturday accused Senate Republicans of rushing confirmations for nominees in President-elect Donald Trump's administration.

In a letter to leading Senate Democrats, Walter Shaub, Jr., the ethics office director, said the busy hearing schedule had overwhelmed his office. He said it had not completed ethics screening reviews on several nominees, which he described as a concern.

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Shaub’s letter to the senators comes just days before the Senate is set to hold a flurry of confirmation hearings beginning on Tuesday. In the letter, Shaub said that the schedule could leave some nominees with “potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues.”

“I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process,” he said.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/313175-ethics-office-accuses-gop-of-rushing-trump-cabinet-confirmations

Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who came under scrutiny last year for her office’s dealings with Trump University and President-elect Donald Trump, will take a job in Trump’s White House, according to a person familiar with the decision.

It was not immediately clear what her title would be. Bondi was not among a lengthy list of White House appointments Trump announced on Wednesday.

A Washington watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service last year charging that Trump’s charitable foundation violated its tax-exempt status by making a $25,000 donation to a political group associated with Bondi in 2013. Bondi later decided not to pursue claims by Florida residents that Trump University had defrauded them.

Trump’s foundation paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS last year for the donation to the Bondi-connected group. At the time of its complaint CREW’s board was led by David Brock, who ran two super-PACs backing Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s general election opponent.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-05/florida-attorney-general-bondi-said-to-have-job-under-trump

Jack Abramoff, the disgraced former lobbyist whose felony crimes eventually helped lead to the creation of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, ripped House Republicans for their move to gut the independent watchdog.

Abramoff, who emerged from prison as a self-styled ethics reformer, told POLITICO that the House GOP package adopted on Monday is “exactly the opposite of what Congress should be doing.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-ethics-panel-jack-abramoff-233126

The president-elect took a number of questions from reporters on the steps of his Mar-a-Lago resort, flanked by Don King.

PEOTUS was asked again about Kerry's speech, he said they have "different views... we'll see what happens after January 20, right?"

Quizzed about the claim that Sprint 5,000 jobs were previously announced he said that Sprint said "because of me they are doing 5,000 jobs in this country ."

He was asked about efforts to disclose intelligence about Russian interference in the election, to which PEOTUS responded "they should do the best they can, figure it all out."

http://publicpool.kinja.com/subject-president-elect-pool-transition-pool-16-pe-1790575241

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump cannot move ahead with his plan to dismantle his charitable foundation because state prosecutors are probing whether the president-elect personally benefited from its spending, the New York attorney general’s office said Tuesday.

“The Trump foundation is still under investigation by this office and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete,” said Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

<snip>

Trump’s charity has admitted that it violated IRS regulations barring it from using its money or assets to benefit Trump, his family, his companies or substantial contributors to the foundation.

The admissions by the Donald J. Trump Foundation were in a 2015 tax filing made public after a presidential election in which it was revealed that Trump has used the charity to settle lawsuits, make a $25,000 political contribution and purchase items, such as a painting of himself, that was displayed at one of his properties.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/ny-ag-trump-cant-dissolve-foundation-investigation/

A charity operated by one of Donald Trump's sons flouts philanthropic standards by financially benefiting charities connected to the Trump family and members of the charity's board, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The AP found that Eric Trump has exaggerated the size of his foundation and the donations it receives. At the same time, the charity's payments for services or donations to other groups repeatedly went to one of Donald Trump's private golf clubs and to charities linked to the Trumps by corporate, family or philanthropic relationships.

The Eric Trump Foundation has raised $7.3 million mostly for children ill with cancer, according to IRS filings since 2007. The charity has long raised money from donors willing to make large contributions to hobnob with the Trumps. For example, golf at the foundation's chief 2015 fundraiser cost up to $50,000 per foursome. Donald Trump often attends these events, which include a gala dinner, and mixes with the guests and has his photo taken.

On Wednesday, the younger Trump said he'll cease soliciting donations for his nonprofit to avoid accusations that contributions could be perceived as a means to buy access to the Trump White House.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-eric-trump-foundation-flouts-charity-standards-44361388

Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference.

The efforts include a “guerrilla archiving event” in Toronto where experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at the University of Pennsylvania focused on how to download as much federal data as possible in the coming weeks, and a collaboration of scientists and database experts who are compiling an online site to harbor scientific information.

“Something that seemed a little paranoid to me before all of a sudden seems potentially realistic, or at least something you’d want to hedge against,” said Nick Santos, an environmental researcher at the University of California at Davis, who over the weekend began copying government climate data onto a nongovernment server, where it will remain available to the public. “Doing this can only be a good thing. Hopefully they leave everything in place. But if not, we’re planning for that.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?postshare=3751481645413207&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.1c4ceeb9da3b

Six donors that Trump appointed gave almost $12 million with their families to back his campaign and the party

With his choice of restaurant executive Andrew Puzder to serve as his Labor secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has now tapped six big donors and fundraisers to serve in his administration, lining up an unprecedented concentration of wealthy backers for top posts.

Together with their families, Trump's nominees gave $11.6 million to support his presidential bid, his allied super PACs and the Republican National Committee, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign filings.

One single appointee — WWE co-founder Linda McMahon — contributed $7.5 million to back his White House run before Trump selected her to run the Small Business Administration this week. She and her husband Vince were also the top outside donors to Trump's private foundation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/12/09/the-six-donors-trump-appointed-to-his-administration-gave-almost-12-million-with-their-families-to-his-campaign-and-the-party/?postshare=4101481310955345&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.57e18ba12350