Ted Lieu Quotes

Public office is supposed to be a public trust. This is a clear sign of the rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Republican leadership.

Trump's foundation has done nothing. Its board is packed with relatives, and he's going to use his presidency to sell himself and his brand and profit personally for himself and his family.

Indeed, President Trump seems to have a pretty good idea how to enrich oneself at taxpayer expense.

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

It seems proper, at all events, that by an early enactment similar to that of other countries the application of public money by an officer of Government to private uses should be made a felony and visited with severe and ignominious punishment.

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

I don't think that anybody is worse than a public official who sells his office and corrupts others.

The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is ever made on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they entrust to their Presidents for public purposes, divided out as family property. Mr. [John] Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject, as General Washington had done himself the highest honor.

Tolerance of corruption, explicit and implicit, has made it impossible to govern…. We need absolute transparency of all the assets of government officials.

The real cost of corruption in government, whether it is local, state, or federal, is a loss of the public trust.

This is what life is like with the Clintons. It is one scandal after another, and you never know what's coming next. They use the system to enrich themselves.

Over the years, Judicial Watch reported on the many times Hillary and Bill Clinton used her position as secretary of state to reward their friends and line the coffers of their own foundation.

It makes me mad to see people in government serving themselves at our expense.

What stalwart Republican would stop Trump from profiteering for his businesses from the White House the way he's gamed his companies and the tax code for decades, or prevent him from letting his adult children milk their father's position to benefit his supposed 'blind trust?'

The Clintons engage routinely in corrupt practices, mixing their political power with their nonprofit work to make themselves rich, while not standing up for the little guy.

To be sure, the Trump administration is shot through with corruption.

Before I was elected to Congress, I helped to create the public corruption unit in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Unfortunately, business was good. Among the usual suspects were government contracts steered to insiders - leaving Illinois taxpayers holding the bag.

You can't take money from the taxpayers out of the treasury to give it to pay off your political donors. That's corruption to do that.

It's very simple. If the American people care about a lot of things including corruption in government, then, in fact, if you use the power to appoint in order to do political business, to clear fields, to save your party money and so on, if it's not a crime - and I believe it is - it certainly is business as usual, politics of corruption.

I think the American government is now the most corrupt government in the world.

I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.

Governments are run by people. People can be bad.

Have I given any symptoms of an avaricious disposition? Have I obtained any grants from the crown since I have been placed at the head of the treasury? Has my conduct been different from that which others in the same station would have followed?

The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.

The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst.