“Senate Confirmation Hearings to Begin Without All Background Checks”

NYT:

In a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr., said on Friday that “the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me.”

He said the packed schedule had put “undue pressure” on the office to rush its reviews of the nominees and he knew of no other occasion in the office’s four decades when the Senate had held a confirmation hearing before the review was completed.

Mr. Schumer responded on Saturday by saying that the letter had made clear that the Trump transition team colluded with Senate Republicans to “jam through” the nominees. Several of the nominees are millionaires or billionaires and have vast webs of financial interests that must be untangled.

Richard W. Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, said he thought none of the nominees could receive a full vote on the Senate floor before the vetting was complete. Norman Eisen, Mr. Obama’s ethics counsel in his first term, said the paperwork delays were “totally unheard-of.”

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