Elon Musk has claimed that one of the most common errors of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist. But it doesn’t take a SpaceX-level engineer to understand that the Office of Government Ethics – an agency few Americans know by name, but whose unchecked power casts a long shadow over our democracy – simply has no purpose in its current form. The OGE is a partisan, bureaucratic thicket that should be fully dismantled. It selectively enforces hazy rules around the financial arrangements of incoming candidates and officials – often in a heavy-handed manner against Republicans. Commonly, the two winners in a battle with OGE are (1) Democrats and (2) lawyers. As a practicing attorney in the field of political law, I have a first-hand look at this frequently-partisan battle waged by OGE against nominees and candidates.
The taxpayer-funded monument to post-Watergate paranoia is a relic of a bygone era. On behalf of my clients, I have navigated its labyrinthine requirements for years, and I can attest: OGE is not a guardian of integrity, but a sanctimonious bureaucratic machine, burdening public servants with meaningless red tape while undermining the will of the electorate. It’s time to dismantle this sham and restore accountability where it belongs: with the voters.
Created in 1978 amid the hysteria following Watergate, OGE operates on a flawed premise: that every public official is a latent crook, requiring constant oversight by unelected mandarins. This assumption insults the intelligence of the American people, who are perfectly capable of judging their leaders at the ballot box. Ethics in government is not preserved by faceless desk jockeys wielding stacks of financial disclosure, recusal, and divestiture forms; it is enforced by citizens casting votes. Outsourcing this sacred responsibility to a bloated agency like OGE diminishes democracy itself while costing taxpayers more than $20 million annually.
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Even worse than the real cost to American taxpayers is the inherent tax this imposes on those looking to serve their country in the federal government. OGE’s bureaucrats personally involve themselves in a probing, uncomfortable, subjective examination of the finances of nearly anyone in a middle or senior position in the federal government, along with that person’s immediate family members. They consider themselves the prosecutor, judge, and jury for whether someone who has had financial success in the real world must give it all away in order to enter the government. What’s worse, OGE often changes its own measurement standards, leading to limited predictability as to what a nominee can keep and what he or she must offload. As an attorney who represents clients through this process, I take no delight in this outcome, but it results in hours of needless work for lawyers and financial advisors, the costs of which must often be borne by the individual seeking to serve.
Consider its practical and public failures. In recent months, OGE’s obsession with nitpicking financial disclosures delayed the confirmation of President Trump’s nominees during an already protracted transition. These reviews — often redundant and always laborious — added no discernible value to the public’s understanding of nominees’ fitness, and cannot possibly be in the public’s interest. By inserting itself as an unelected gatekeeper, OGE slows governance and frustrates the mandate of elections.
Worse, OGE has become a weapon of partisan warfare, selectively enforcing its vague standards to target Republicans while giving Democrats a free pass. Take the case of Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who held millions in stock in an electric bus manufacturer championed by the administration. In 2021, President Biden visited the company, praising it as a cornerstone of America’s green future. The company later went bankrupt, but not before the secretary cashed out with $1.6 million in capital gains after Biden’s visit.
OGE’s response? Silence. Contrast this with the agency’s relentless hounding of Trump’s HHS Secretary Tom Price in 2017 over private jet travel, fueling a media firestorm that ultimately led to his resignation. The pattern is clear: OGE plays favorites, acting as a blocker to create controversies for one side while ignoring the other.
This double standard extends to OGE’s handling of high-profile figures. When FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr contributed to the authorship of Project 2025, Democrats cried “conflict of interest.” OGE dragged out its review, allowing the Left to smear Trump’s agenda unchecked, only to clear Carr after the damage was done, just two weeks before the 2024 election.
Compare this to Hunter Biden’s lucrative Burisma dealings during the Obama years — OGE didn’t utter a peep. Similarly, Biden’s Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack faced no scrutiny for cozy private jet trips in 2022, while OGE amplified outrage over far less egregious Republican travel. Such selective amnesia betrays OGE’s impartiality and exposes its role as a partisan cudgel of the deep state.
The agency’s redundancy compounds its flaws. Every federal department already has internal ethics offices, rendering OGE’s $24 million annual budget a wasteful duplication. If an official breaks the law, the Department of Justice can prosecute.
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OGE’s sister agency, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which polices Hatch Act violations, is cut from the same cloth. In 2024, Biden’s budget director Neera Tanden flirted with Hatch Act violations, fundraising brazenly on X, while FTC Chair Lina Khan appeared at Democratic campaign events, prompting a House Oversight inquiry. OSC’s response? Nothing.
Yet in 2017, it aggressively pursued Kellyanne Conway for a fleeting comment about Ivanka Trump’s brand, demanding probes and decrying the “death of democracy.” The hypocrisy is stark: Democrats skate, while Trump’s allies face the guillotine.
President Trump’s decision to fire OGE chief David Huitema in February 2025 was a bold step in the right direction toward dismantling this deep-state agency with crosshairs on Republicans. The public’s resounding reelection of Trump in 2024 was a mandate to sweep away such bureaucratic obstructions, not a call for more oversight by unelected elites. Trump’s broader dismissal of 17 inspectors general alongside Huitema sparked predictable outrage, but it underscored a truth: officials elected by the voters–not agencies–hold the power to punish misconduct.
Abolishing OGE would not leave ethics unpoliced. Internal agency offices, the Justice Department, and — most crucially — the electorate provide ample checks. OGE’s existence only fuels conflict, delays the president’s administration from being filled with his chosen advisors, and erodes trust in public institutions, the very opposite of its stated mission. It’s time to end this bureaucratic charade. Let’s trust the American people to hold their leaders accountable, as democracy demands.