The Supreme Court, Trump, Conflict Of Interest, And Loyalty
By
This New York Times article goes on a bit about the new Trump Administration’s bias against really competent Republicans who would like jobs in the administration, but who are being blackballed from joining the new administration because of their association with putative Trump enemies within the GOP.
The example given is one William Levi, a former law clerk of Associate Justice Alito who served in the William Barr Justice Department as chief of staff. The article says that Barr is now considered a Trump enemy and a non-loyalist. The same is true of Nikki Hayley and Mike Pompeo according to the article.
The conflict of interest part is being hung on a phone call between Trump and Justice Alito just before the matter of Trump’s sentencing in New York went before the Supreme Court. Alito claims he was unaware of the pending emergency application from Trump’s lawyers. Maybe he wasn’t aware yet, but surely he knew it was coming. We all did.
Whether the call was instigated by Levi to get Alito to put in a good word for him or not, Trump and Alito should not have been talking given what the whole world knew what was coming at the Court. Furthermore, if Levi has served Trump well in the past, why tar him with the “disloyal” label now? In fact, why tar Haley, Pompeo, or Barr with that label?
Why? Because Trump demands absolute loyalty even if the supposed disloyal person was just doing his or her job. This demand for loyalty is now being used to pursue FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers who worked on January 6 cases. This is dangerous and suggests that the new administration will be populated by like-thinking people which will interfere with useful discussions when hard decisions have to be made. This is concerning.
Secondly, Trump still does not get conflict of interest as may be indicated by the rumor he wishes to reacquire the Trump hotel in Washington where fat cats can stay while lining Trump’s pockets.
I am very familiar with both loyalty and conflict of interest. As a vice president at MD Anderson, I was bathed in conflict of interest involving the institution’s president who I was serving. I too was tarred by the Houston Chronicle for covering up for his conflict of interest (doing trials of the drug he invented using patients from the institution he led without informing the patients of the fact that their involvement would line the president’s pockets). One day he sold stock in the company whose drug was being tested at Anderson worth $6 million. I hope you see my dilemma as the overseer and staffer of the conflict of interest committee then.
I don’t think the president I served ever saw me as loyal. I wasn’t loyal to him. That was not my job. I was loyal to the federal code and preventing MD Anderson from violating it.
A certain amount of institutional loyalty is a good thing. But when the leadership of an institution begins to see himself (it’s always a he) as the embodiment of the institution, the trouble starts.
Ditto with conflict of interest. In the federal government, loyalty is to the Constitution not one’s own interests. I don’t think Trump gets that.
In academic medicine, loyalty is to the truth and to patient care, not to one’s retirement fund.
I’m not sure if this article really identifies a major issue of either disloyalty or conflict of interest. But it does kind of smell and Trump hadn’t taken the oath of office yet when I wrote this.
Since I wrote this, my concern is that Mr. Trump will leverage his position of authority and power to enrich himself and his cronies like Elon Musk. Lots of people have no problem with such conflicts of interest. Silly me. I still do. I actually wrote a novel that relates in fictional form a lot of what I faced as a VP. Guess what the title is?
Conflict of Interest: Money Drives Medicine and People Die. It’s available on Amazon.
