Richard Painter Quotes

I don't like conflicts of interest; they should be eliminated or disclosed. I believe in transparency: that people have to really not just know but understand what they're buying and selling.

We learned that President-elect [Donald] Trump intends to keep his executive producer title on Celebrity Apprentice. We know he's going to come out later this week and talk about how he's going to handle the overall conflicts of interests, perhaps, with his businesses in the White House.

Apparently it's acceptable for members of Congress to own stock in companies we regulate in Congress, but somehow, our plumbing company crosses some line.

After Trump became president, it was really too late to investigate his dodgy investments in Azerbaijan or his links to Russian money laundering. Those stories should have eliminated him from business, and from public life, long before 2016.

Almost every business is regulated by the state. So if you're going to say, 'If you own any business, you shouldn't run for public office,' I don't think that's what we want.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Opacity on extreme levels is not addressed anywhere, including Dodd-Frank.

As Members of Congress, we should not be using public office for private gain.

Of course art world ethics are important. But museums are no purer than any other institution or business. Academics aren't necessarily more high-minded than gallerists.

Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies.

If my company spends money, it should be disclosed to the shareholders and how it was spent. With my personal money, I can do anything I want. But company money should be disclosed.

I ask the vice president to stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued ties with Halliburton to the American people.

Business and politics have a wholesome and an unwholesome interface. You have to eliminate the unwholesome interface.

No politician ever admits where all his money comes from.

Those who bank terrorism are equally culpable with those who commit it. I’d feel a lot better if the Saudis were not auditing the Saudis We have had our own experiences where the auditors had a conflict of interest.

The assumption has to be that members of Congress are, like eunuchs in a harem, physically incapable of a conflict of interest.

Honorariums are really dishonorariums. So long as they continue, public trust in Congress will sink even below its minimal level today.... Public officials should have only one paymaster: the Government. When the Government pays too little, the temptation to find other paymasters becomes far harder to resist.

The time is coming when all businesses will have to be done with glass pockets.

For Louisiana politicians, bribery is an occupational hazard. When I took the oath of office I didn't take an oath of poverty.

Abramoff did not own me, but we did engage in the culture of corruption together.

Donations to political parties, candidates and elected officials should not be a means to gain personal or policy favours or buy access to politicians or civil servants…. Political parties, candidates and politicians should disclose assets, income and expenditure to an independent agency.

There will be more [political] scandals. There is too much money around …. It is legal for an American subsidiary corporation owned by the Chinese Army to make a major contribution to an American political party.

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.

Neither ethical lapses nor public corruption are commonplace, let alone tolerated..

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing business under corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested.