President Donald Trump’s administration surreptitiously handed an official charged with combating “fraud” in the federal government a waiver from conflict-of-interest rules, NOTUS reported on Thursday.
“Jetson Leder-Luis’ ‘disqualifying financial interest’ in Amazon.com is ‘not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity’ of his work as deputy executive director of Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, White House counsel David Warrington wrote in the memo dated April 16,” reported Dave Levinthal.
Leder-Luis is a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, who has advised the Department of Health and Human Services on health care fraud since last year.
According to the report, “As of April, Leder-Luis’ wife owned unvested restricted stock units in Amazon.com worth a projected $237,558, according to the memo, which granted Leder-Luis a ‘limited waiver’ from federal conflict-of-interest law” — despite the fact that Amazon, through its Web Services infrastructure, has a number of significant federal contracts with programs that Leder-Luis would be in charge of auditing.
Warrington’s memo added that, “It is important that you also be able to participate in matters that focus on preventing and enforcing fraud generally in critical areas that the Task Force may be investigating or reviewing, including areas that may affect Amazon’s financial interests.”
All of this comes as Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos has ingratiated himself with the Trump administration, after previous years of criticism of his immigration policy, contributing to Trump’s inaugural fund and bankrolling a controversial and poorly-received movie about first lady Melania Trump.
Bezos minimized all of this in an interview released this week, saying, “I’m on the side of America. I was helping Obama every chance I could. I was helping Biden every chance I could. I still call Obama for advice — he’s a very smart guy.”
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