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Federal employees who get into legal trouble can, under certain circumstances, accept financial help from legal expense funds. Now the Office of Government Ethics has proposed a revision to the rules for legal expense funds. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got the gist of the new rule from the associate counsel in the Office of Government Ethics, Elizabeth Horton.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin: Ms. Horton, good to have you on.
Elizabeth Horton: Thank you for having me.
Tom Temin: And I have to confess this is an area of government legality that even I am not familiar with, after many, many years of covering this. So talk about what domain we’re operating in here federal employees getting money for legal expense funds. What is this rule all about to begin with, the existing rule?
Elizabeth Horton: I’ll first start off if I may, with a brief overview of the Office of Government Ethics in case anyone is unaware or unfamiliar with us. The Office of Government Ethics, or OGE provides overall leadership and oversight of the Executive Branch Ethics Program. And our mission is to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest. So in that role, we develop and advise on ethics regulations, and on standards of ethical conduct for more than 2.7 million employees in over 130 executive branch agencies.
Now, I just mentioned the standards of...
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