| REUTERS/Gary Cameron |
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote a memo to the Ford administration advising that conflict of interest laws do not apply to the president or vice president, but should be observed nonetheless.
Though he did not have occasion to address these issues from the bench, in 1974 he was asked to write an advisory opinion addressing whether a federal conflict of interest law applied to the president and vice president. At the time Scalia was assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which provides legal advice to the president and various executive branch agencies.
The White House asked for OLC’s views because incoming Vice President Nelson Rockefeller boasted considerable financial holdings, and the Ford administration was concerned about impropriety. Still reeling from the damage of Watergate, the beleaguered White House was eager to avoid scandal.
Scalia’s memo concluded the conflict of interest law was not binding on the president or the vice president, but also counseled that failure to maintain those standards would look rotten.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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