The Biden administration will not be a family affair.
President Joe Biden has been hustling to play up his ethics policies and to avoid showing any conflicts of interest since taking office last month. This has included debunking reports that his sister Valerie Biden Owens was getting an office in the West Wing, and vowing that there will be limits placed on the use of the president’s name and image.
And he doubled-down on distancing himself from the Trump administration in this regard during a People interview released on Wednesday. “We’re going to run this like the Obama-Biden administration,” he said. “No one in our family and extended family is going to be involved in any government undertaking or foreign policy. And nobody has an office in this place.”
“ “No one in our family and extended family is going to be involved in any government undertaking or foreign policy. And nobody has an office in this place.” ”
His daughter Ashley Biden has also openly stated that “I will not have a job with the administration.”
This policy is a pointed about-face from the political capital given to former President Donald Trump’s family members, particularly his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who sparked controversy for their roles as special assistant and senior adviser to the president, respectively. Trump had also faced lawsuits alleging he illegally profited from his presidency, such as spending taxpayer money at his company’s golf clubs and hotels. But the Supreme Court dismissed the suits as moot now that Trump is out of office.
The new chief executive drew on a sports metaphor to illustrate how carefully he tries to toe an ethical line. “I remember years ago an accountant said, ‘You know, you can charge (the Senate) part of the gas you use in the vehicle at your home.’ And I said, ‘No,’ ” Biden said. “Here’s how I look at it: The foul line is 15 feet away from the basket. Never get me closer than 17 feet, because it really is a matter of the public trust.”
Still, the Biden administration has already faced questions about whether the president’s family could profit from the presidency — particularly after Frank Biden, one of the president’s younger brothers, ran an ad in a Florida newspaper on Inauguration Day promoting their relationship. “The two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront,” the ad read in part, according to a CNBC report.
This led White House press secretary Jen Psaki to tell reporters on Friday that “the president is committed to ensuring we have the most ethically vigorous administration in history, and that includes restrictions on how his image can be used, and that is something that he’s conveyed publicly and privately,” she said. “It’s the White House’s policy that the president’s name should not be used in connection with any commercial activities to suggest … in any way that could reasonably be understood to imply his endorsement or support.”
She also said the Biden administration has made the commitment that members of the president’s family won’t serve in the administration, and “that continues to be the commitment.”
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden also discussed the looming second Trump impeachment trial and the challenges for the country ahead in their first interview as the First Couple. He clarified that when he told CNN last week that impeachment “has to happen,” he meant that the trial must proceed. “He was impeached by the House, and it has to move forward, otherwise it would come off as farcical … it makes a mockery of the system,” Biden told People. “It’s probably not likely to get 17 Republicans to change their view and convict on impeachment, but I think it’s important that there be certain basic standards.”
He added that, “I’m not looking for any retribution. My job is to try to heal the country and move us forward, because I think we have so many opportunities as a country.”
As for what he thinks America will look like at this time next year: “I hope we have fundamentally returned to normal as it relates to COVID,” he said. “I hope we have really begun to make inroads on equity for all people … where they can have decent jobs and decent opportunities, and the economy is growing, and people are back to a degree of optimism.”
“We have such an incredible opportunity as a country now,” Biden added. “Not because of me, but because the American people sort of had the blinders ripped off, and they realized that, man, we have problems, but we also have enormous opportunities.”
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