President Donald Trump is set to announce his new opus for the agency, the “Opus Agency” for which the Trump Organization has hired a former top executive to lead.
The agency’s mission will be to support the president’s agenda by “working to achieve his goals through the use of public information, data and analytics tools to inform the public,” according to a statement from the Office of Government Ethics.
The president and his staff will announce the hiring of the agency’s chief executive on May 22, the ethics statement said.
The announcement comes as Trump’s business empire is on the defensive after revelations of his financial conflicts of interest and conflicts of law.
The Trump Organization, led by his two adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr., had to pay $50 million in penalties to the Justice Department for violating federal laws governing foreign emoluments laws.
But it was the president himself who paid a $25 million fine and a $500,000 fine to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a ruling that drew condemnation from Republicans and some Democrats.
The new Opus agency will be run by longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who was recently named as chief of staff to Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller.
Bannon and Miller are expected to be named as the agency chief executives.
“While we are deeply committed to our shared mission of delivering the president and the people of the United States with the best information available, the administration is working to develop an Opus program to further advance the President’s goals through data, analysis and transparency,” said Andrew Shapiro, who will serve as chief operating officer for the Opus initiative, in the statement.
On Friday, the Office, the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department and the Office for Government Ethics announced they would be working together to “coordinate the implementation of the President Trump Opus Program,” according an OGE press release.
As the Trump administration tries to rein in its administration’s ties to Russia and the Trump family’s finances, the president is expected to announce an Opis program.
President Trump on May 23 announced the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief executive officer of the opus Agency, which is a new initiative created by his family to improve public access to the president, his administration and its finances.
Bannon, who previously served as chief strategist for Trump’s campaign, previously led the Trump business empire.
Trump’s new opis would be a departure from the previous administration, which hired the Trump Foundation to fund research into climate change and other topics and had a “climate czar” with ties to climate denial, according to the New York Times.
In an interview with the Times, former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who resigned over the Trump EPA’s response to a major COVID-19 outbreak, said she was disappointed that Trump would use his administration to “gut” the EPA.
“The way we should be using our agency is to be really focused on the public interest and not be just focused on trying to do what’s politically expedient,” McCarthy told the Times.
“If you look at how the Obama administration was working, and how they were doing things, it was about what they felt the president wanted them to do.
The goal was to help the American people and make sure they have access to everything.”