Trump has nominated one of his lawyers to oversee coronavirus relief funds

Time will tell.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/5/21208934/coronavirus-relief-funds-oversight-trump-inspector-general-nominee-miller?fbclid=IwAR1uNTvMff8lqTKpRO4k22yWtQN3uku69FQAeD7L_mrMoOFlAU59kFRzPLY

By Anya van Wagtendonkanyavw@protonmail.com Apr 5, 2020, 5:40pm EDT

On Friday evening, President Donald Trump announced that he had picked White House lawyer Brian Miller to oversee how billions of dollars in coronavirus-related relief money is spent.

Though Miller has a long history of serving as an agency watchdog and was celebrated as Trump’s pick by some transparency experts, Democrats have pushed back on the decision. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others said over the weekend that Miller’s current work within the administration means he will be insufficiently neutral as special inspector general over a $500 billion corporate bailout fund, part of a $2 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress to offset some of the economic damage caused by the spread of Covid-19.

In negotiations for the third coronavirus relief package, passed on March 25, Democrats pushed for transparency measures over the half-trillion-dollar fund, which was set aside for large industries. The final bill created the office of a Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery (SIGPR) within the Treasury Department to audit and investigate usage of that fund.

Miller is currently a special assistant to the president and serves as senior associate counsel in the Office of White House Counsel, so he was involved in the president’s defense during his impeachment trial.

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“He is a quality pick. You couldn’t do better. He combines loyalty to the administration with the independence you need in an IG,” agreed Keith Ashdown, former staff director for the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which has oversight over inspectors general, according to the same Post article.

Not all transparency advocates lauded the choice, however. Noah Bookbinder, who serves as the executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an advocacy group for ethics, criticized Miller’s nomination on Twitter.

Miller must still be approved by the Senate, at which point he would also sit on a council of watchdogs from other agencies, forming a broader oversight group. It is unclear when that confirmation would take place, however, because the Senate is out of session until at least late April.


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