Trump Administration/Executive Ethics

“Congress should also explore the idea of independent clemency boards to review clemency petitions and advise the president. This could eliminate biases and conflicts of interest inherent in the current system, which often relies on prosecutors at the Department of Justice to serve as a check on their own prosecutions. Members of such a clemency board should reflect our country's diversity and be representative of stakeholders inside and outside the criminal justice system,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause.

Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn will testify before the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on the “Constitutional Means to Prevent Abuse of the Clemency Power.” Her full written testimony was submitted to the Subcommittee in advance of the hearing. Other witnesses include Georgetown University Law Professor Caroline Fredrickson and historian Timothy Naftali of New York University.

“Big time bait-and-switch by Donald Trump and a bunch of other politicians lower in the food chain capitalizing on that opportunity — to rip their own supporters off, really,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a government watchdog group in Washington, D.C. “The donors who were defrauded by and large in November and December by team Trump — these were elderly Republican donors who …it’s just despicable to prey on that donor pool, in my opinion,” Ryan said.

The fundraising numbers signal just how potent the election fraud argument became with Trump's most loyal supporters, experts told ABC News. Paul S. Ryan, a vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a Washington-based good-government group, called the fundraising effort deceptive. "It was based entirely on fraud ... by Team Trump alleging that there were problems in the election, that Trump needed money to hire lawyers to fight and that he won the election," Ryan said. "And in my experience watchdogging money in politics closely for more than 20 years, this is unprecedented."

“We should have standardize rules and that’s what this bill is doing,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy at the advocacy group Common Cause. “This hopefully would tamp down on all of that chaotic litigation by getting these rules settled and setting a national standard.

Minority Leader McConnell’s (R-KY) decision to hold up the Senate’s organizing resolution over the filibuster rule was a trial balloon that failed. Americans voted for change and they expect the new President and the new Congress to address the pressing health, financial, structural racism, climate, and democracy crises facing our nation. McConnell, a fierce architect of obstruction throughout his tenure in Congress, has signaled his plans for the 117th Congress: Delay, deny, and distort the Majority’s right to set the chamber’s agenda at every turn. We have seen this before when McConnell spent six years abusing the filibuster at unprecedented levels during the Obama administration. This cannot be allowed to happen again.