After Guilfoyle dismissal, Rubio reminds diplomats to ‘avoid conflicts of interest’; The Washington Post, October 14, 2026

John Hudson, The Washington Post; After Guilfoyle dismissal, Rubio reminds diplomats to ‘avoid conflicts of interest’

[Kip Currier: It's a positive step to see Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly acknowledge the importance of all State Department staff to "avoid conflicts of interest." Much more needs to be done, however, to instill greater trust in the public, encourage maximal transparency, and hold employees accountable for ethics transgressions. Even an "appearance of impropriety" is injurious to public trust.

In my graduate courses in ethics, management and leadership, and intellectual property at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information (SCI), I underscore for students that the most important take-away is to hone their abilities to identify potential and actual ethics issues. Issues like conflicts of interest and accountability. Everyday, we see individuals -- and organizations -- in the news, as well as in our own communities, who have inadvertently or willfully made ethically concerning and/or ethically violative decisions.

With that in mind, I knew from the beginning that my Bloomsbury ethics book -- Ethics, Information, and Technology (2025) -- needed to have a robust section on Character and Professional Ethics in the initial portion of the book. The aim was to lay a firm foundation for readers to be well-grounded in character and professional ethics, as preparation for better grappling with and understanding the fundamentals and nuances of bedrock issues facing democracies and societies now: intellectual freedom and censorship, access and digital divides, freedom of expression, free and independent presses, privacy and surveillance, data autonomy, accuracy of information, misinformation and disinformation, social media ethics, ethics of AI and other emerging technologies, and more. 

Character and Professional Ethics topics examined and explained in the book include: integrity, misrepresentation, plagiarism, attribution, conflicts of interest, transparency, accountability, corruption, and trust.]

[Excerpt]

"A day after President Donald Trump fired his ambassador to Greece amid a flurry of ethics complaints, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a message to all State Department employees reminding them to “avoid conflicts of interest.” 

“It is my expectation that every member of our team must act with uncompromising personal and professional integrity,” wrote Rubio in a memo obtained by The Washington Post. “I expect employees to avoid conflicts of interest in our work, to act impartially, and to avoid using our public offices for private gain.”"

DOJ faces ethics nightmare with Trump bid for $230M settlement; The Hill, October 31, 2025

 REBECCA BEITSCH, The Hill; DOJ faces ethics nightmare with Trump bid for $230M settlement

[Kip Currier: This real life "nightmare" scenario is akin to a hypothetical law school exam fact pattern with scores of ethics issues for law students to identify and discuss. Would that it were a fictitious set of facts.

If Trump's former personal attorneys, who are now in the top DOJ leadership, will not recuse themselves due to genuine conflicts of interest and appearances of impropriety, will the state and federal bar associations, who license these attorneys and hold them to annual continuing legal and ethics-related education requirements so they can remain in good standing with their respective licensing entities, step in to scrutinize potential ethical lapses of these lawyers?

These unprecedented actions by Trump must not be treated as normal. Similarly, if Trump's former personal attorneys approve Trump's attempt to "shake down" the federal government and American taxpayers, their ethically dubious actions as DOJ leaders and officers of the court must not be normalized by the organizations that are charged to enforce ethical standards for all licensed attorneys.

Moreover, approval of this settlement would be damaging to the rule of law and to public trust in the rule of law. If the most powerful person on the planet can demand that an organization -- whose leadership reports to him -- pay out a "settlement" for lawfully-conducted actions and proceedings in a prior administration, what does that say about the state of justice in the U.S.? I posit that it would say that it is a justice system that has been utterly corrupted and that is not subject to equal application of its laws and ethical standards. No person is above the law, or should be above the law in our American system of government and checks and balances. Not even the U.S. President, despite the Roberts Court's controversial Trump v. U.S. July 2024 ruling recognizing absolute and limited Presidential immunity in certain spheres.

Finally, a few words about "speaking out" and "standing up". It is vital for those who are in leadership positions to call out actions like the ones at hand that arguably undermine the rule of law and incrementally move this country from one that is democratically-centered to an autocratic nation state like Russia. I searched for and could find no statement by the American Bar Association (ABA) on this matter, a matter that is clearly relevant to its membership, of which I count myself as a member.

Will the ABA and other legal organizations share their voices on these matters that have such far-reaching implications for the rule of law and our nearly 250-year democratic experiment?

The paperback version of my Bloomsbury book, Ethics, Information, and Technology, becomes available on November 13, and I intentionally included a substantial professional and character ethics section at the outset of the book because those principles are so integral to how we conduct ourselves in all areas of our lives. Ethics precepts and values like integrity, attribution, truthfulness and avoidance of misrepresentation, transparency, accountability, and disclosure of conflicts of interest, as well as recusal when we have conflicts of interest.]

[Excerpt]

"The Department of Justice (DOJ) is facing pressure to back away from a request from President Trump for a $230 million settlement stemming from his legal troubles, as critics say it raises a dizzying number of ethical issues.

Trump has argued he deserves compensation for the scrutiny into his conduct, describing himself as a victim of both a special counsel investigation into the 2016 election and the classified documents case.

The decision, however, falls to a cadre of attorneys who previously represented Trump personally.

Rupa Bhattacharyya, who reviewed settlement requests in her prior role as director of the Torts Branch of the DOJ’s Civil Division, said most agreements approved by the department are typically for tens of thousands of dollars or at most hundreds of thousands.

“In the ordinary course, the filing of administrative claims is required. So that’s not unusual. In the ordinary course, a relatively high damages demand on an administrative claim is also not that unusual. What is unusual here is the fact that the president is making a demand for money from his own administration, which raises all sorts of ethical problems,” Bhattacharyya told The Hill.

“It’s also just completely unheard of. There’s never been a case where the president of the United States would ask the department that he oversees to make a decision in his favor that would result in millions of dollars lining his own pocket at the expense of the American taxpayer.”

It’s the high dollar amount Trump is seeking that escalates the decision to the top of the department, leaving Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as well as Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, to consider the request."