Campaign Legal Center analyzed ethics compliance data across federal agencies and uncovered a concerning trend: Since the start of the second Trump administration, the effectiveness of agency ethics offices is declining significantly.
Since 2025, there are fewer ethics officials, more political appointees taking over ethics offices from career public servants, more vacant ethics leadership positions overall, fewer prosecutions of criminal ethics violations, and more financial disclosure non-compliance compared to past years.
This trend is important to examine because as ethics violations seem more common and ethics offices are subject to more political influence while working with fewer resources, ethics laws can become almost meaningless due to lack of enforcement.
Every year, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) publishes federal agencies’ Annual Questionnaire findings on the overall status of their ethics programs, including numbers on the investigations they hold, the financial disclosure reports they collect, and the number of referrals for further investigations they send to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
This data — which is collected from over 140 offices and agencies in the executive branch — helps inform the public about how well the federal government ethics program is working to monitor and prevent corruption within the executive branch.
For a full analysis of these numbers and what they mean for ethics enforcement, check out Campaign Legal Center’s explainer.
What do the 2025 OGE Annual Questionnaire responses tell us about the state of ethics enforcement in the current administration?
Ethics across government has been weakened during the past year in several different ways:
- Fewer ethics officials across the executive branch: There are now 274 fewer full-time ethics officials across the executive branch. Forty percent of executive branch ethics offices reported that they need more resources to effectively run their programs.
- Significant disruptions in ethics leadership: Each federal agency’s ethics program is overseen by a Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO), an official with the important responsibility of establishing the ethical guidelines for their agency and ensuring compliance with the law. These are usually highly trained, career public servants.
- However, in 2025, 20% of these senior ethics positions were filled with political appointees — calling into question their qualifications and true independence from the president’s political will.
- Less compliance with financial disclosure rules: Ethics officials have seen a significant reduction in the rate of compliance with financial disclosure laws. In 2025, 418 public financial disclosure reports were never filed, which is almost a four-fold increase in the number of public financial disclosure reports that were missing in 2024.
- These numbers suggest that there may be ethics violations occurring without any oversight within the federal government, especially among senior-level officials.
- Potential criminal ethics violations are waived or not prosecuted: Executive branch officials issued 249 criminal ethics waivers in 2025, nearly double the number of waivers issued in years past. Despite criminal ethics waivers being intended only for rare circumstances, the rate of ethics waivers issued in 2025 is double the rate of waivers that were issued during the Biden administration.
- Furthermore, when criminal ethics violations are uncovered, they’re usually referred to the DOJ; however, the DOJ declined to prosecute 94% of the violations they received from other federal agencies in 2025.
How do we improve ethics enforcement in the administration?
At Campaign Legal Center, we utilize every legal pathway available to strengthen and enforce the ethics standards that hold our public officials accountable. But we need more than just legal action: We’re calling on our lawmakers to advance comprehensive reform today to ensure public officials comply with the high ethical standards our democracy requires:
- Create an independent executive branch ethics body that can enforce the law. Congress should establish an oversight body with the authority necessary to conduct thorough and prompt investigations and centralize the enforcement of federal ethics laws. This body should be led by appointed officials in a manner that shields them from political retribution, and the body should be required to maintain transparent records that inform the public of its activities and the ethical reports of government employees.
- Shut the revolving door to lobbyists in government. Placing restrictions on how lobbyists assume roles in government that directly oversee the industries they previously to represented could help decrease the number of government officials who may prioritize their own financial or political interests over the public good.
Executive branch officials hold vast power, and they should make decisions in the public’s interest. Those who are nominated to and serve in the second Trump administration and future administrations must live up to this high standard or be held accountable when they fall short.
To follow Campaign Legal Center’s actions holding the Trump administration accountable, check out our action page.