a)Whoever receives any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary, as compensation for his services as an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government, of any independent agency of the United States, or of the District of Columbia, from any source other than the Government of the United States, except as may be contributed out of the treasury of any State, county, or municipality; or,

Whoever, whether an individual, partnership, association, corporation, or other organization pays, makes any contribution to, or in any way supplements, the salary of any such officer or employee under circumstances which would make its receipt a violation of this subsection—

Shall be subject to the penalties set forth in section 216 of this title….

(d) This section does not prohibit payment or acceptance of contributions, awards, or other expenses under the terms of chapter 41 of title 5.

The Campaign Legal Center has filed an ethics a complaint based on Trump’s gifts to his staff. Like virtually all the self-described “non partisan” non profits styled as government watch-dogs, this one isn’t. Its founder and current head, Trevor Potter, has been focused on “getting Trump” since 2016. Look at the subject matter in his newsletter. Funny, nothing to see there regarding the Biden fiascos, the auto-pen, the cover-up of a senile President’s decline, the ethics of an administration deliberately refusing to enforce immigration laws.. I wonder why?

This ethics expert takes the following position.

• The President personally giving out such large gifts to staff is a bad precedent, and especially foolish given the ever-present Axis motive to declare everything Trump does as “Evil! EVIL!” It would breach the “appearance of impropriety” restriction in the Federal employee ethics rules, except the regulations don’t apply to the President. (But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.)
• Trump comes from a corporate culture, and sees the gifts as bonuses. Is a bonus a gift, or a supplement to a salary? Well, I got a Christmas bonus once, and I regarded it as a gift. My boss at the time certainly acted as if it were his gift. The President’s gifts are ambiguous, certainly too ambiguous to justify a criminal prosecution.
• The statute would punish the recipients rather than the giver or “supplementer,” the President. Oh, I’m sure the Trump-haters will be happy to persecute his most trusted aides…after all, they must be evil too.
• If Congress flips in November, I have no doubt that Trump’s bonuses will be on their long list of justifications for another fake impeachment, and Painter will be the Democrats’ first witness.
• I find it odd to read critics saying that the gifts will make Presidential aides excessively loyal to the President of the United States. Presidential aides in the past have been willing to risk their lives, commit crimes, cover up affairs, ruin their marriages and go to jail for their Presidents. All patriotic Americans are obligated to be loyal to the President, whoever he is. The Axis of Unethical Conduct can’t conceive of such traditional fealty because they hate the current President.

I do believe there is condign justice in the fact that Trump’s gratuitous insults to John McCain (when he denigrated prisoners of war as “losers”) and the Bush brothers continues to plague him. The Bush cabal, including Liz Cheney as well as Painter, has been seeking revenge ever since, and Trevor Potter was a member of McCain’s inner circle.