White House Details Ethics Waivers for Ex-Lobbyists and Corporate Lawyers

President Trump has given at least 16 White House staff members dispensation to work on policy matters they handled while employed as lobbyists or to interact with their former colleagues in private-sector jobs.

The details on these so-called ethics waivers — more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration — were made public after an intense dispute between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics, which had been pushing the Trump administration to stop granting such waivers in secret. The list of waivers includes high-profile names such as Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser. They had to be granted waivers because of their prior work with organizations such as the Republican National Committee, which Priebus once ran, and because they continue to have contact with those organizations as part of their White House work. But the waivers granted by the White House are also going to former lobbyists, despite Trump’s campaign vow to try to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington.