Office of Government Ethics Director Walter M. Shaub announced his resignation on Thursday after months of conflict with the Trump administration, notably regarding divestiture from President Donald Trump's businesses and delays in disclosing ethics waivers for appointees.
Shaub, an attorney, expressed dissatisfaction with the "current situation" at the OGE and announced he accepted a new job at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, NPR reports. Shaub did not elaborate further on the problems he had at the OGE, but he did mention wanting greater freedom to pursue reform.
"The current situation has made it clear that the ethics program needs to be stronger than it is," Shaub told NPR. "At the Campaign Legal Center, I'll have more freedom to push for reform."
Shaub sent Trump his resignation letter and praised his colleagues in the ethics office for their work.
BREAKING: Walter Shaub, director of US Office of Government Ethics, is resigning, he says in letter to Pres. Trump. pic.twitter.com/Xtba0PskWC
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) July 6, 2017
The OGE only has the authority to advise on ethics, but Shaub had tried to use the small agency to put pressure on Trump. Shaub used the OGE's Twitter account to criticize Trump's stance on divestiture and mock his style of tweeting.
"Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, good for America!" one tweet read. Shaub also criticized Trump's ethics decisions at the Brookings Institution in January just before the inauguration.
Shaub said Trump's plan to avoid conflicts of interest "doesn't meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met."
"His sons are still running the businesses, and, of course, he knows what he owns," Shaub added at the Brookings event.
Shaub had also demanded that the Trump administration make ethics waivers for appointees public, which it did ultimately do. Still, Shaub did not see all his desires met.
Shaub received a bipartisan rebuke from Congress shortly after Trump took office for criticizing the president in a closed-door meeting. Some critics have questioned his objectivity toward Trump, citing his political donations to former President Barack Obama and prior defense of Hillary Clinton's ethics.
Shaub said that the ethics office received much more attention during the Trump administration than it had before.
"We've even had a couple days where the volume was so huge it filled up the voicemail box, and we couldn't clear the calls as fast as they were coming in," Shaub told NPR in April.
Shaub's resignation will take effect on July 19.