"I ask that you
reconsider this decision," 2020 candidate tells former Trump official
Maybe Scott Gottleib thought
he could avoid scrutiny by making the move to the board of pharmaceutical giant
Pfizer just over two months after leaving his position as President Donald
Trump's commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—but if so, he
didn't count on Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren, a Democrat from
Massachusetts who is also running for her party's nomination for president in
2020, released a
letter (pdf) Tuesday morning calling on Gottleib to step down from the
board in the name of government ethics.
"You will be on the board
of a company that has billions of dollars at stake in the decisions made
by the agency you used to head and the employees you used to lead," states
Warren's letter.
It's a profitable venture for
Gottleib.
"According to
Pfizer," Warren notes, "board members in 2018 were paid $142,500
in cash retainers, plus received $192,500 worth of Pfizer stock."
Appointed by Trump, Gottleib
was the head of the FDA from 2017 until he resigned on April 5 of this year.
After leaving the government, he took
a job with right-wing think tank The American Enterprise Institute.
The move
to Pfizer, however, came later and was only announced on June 27.
In Warren's letter,
which Common Dreams obtained exclusively and is reproduced below, the
senator refers favorably to Gottleib's work with the FDA before hitting him on
joining Pfizer and tying that move to the behavior of other officials in
President Donald Trump's White House who have left the administration for big
money payouts.
"You are the second
high-level Trump Administration official in less than two months to join
the board of a corporation soon after leaving government service," reads
the letter. "In May 2019, former Trump Administration DHS Secretary
and Chief of Staff John Kelly joined the board of Caliburn, Inc., the
parent company of the Comprehensive Health Services, which runs
the notorious Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in
Florida."
"You should rectify your
mistake and immediately resign from your position as a Pfizer board
member," Warren adds.
Warren's letter cites her
Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act as a possible solution to
government officials behaving in this way in the future. As Common
Dreams reported in
June, Warren and the legislation's sponsor in the House, Rep. Pramila Jayapal
(D-Wash.), see the problem as systemic to Washington's public-private revolving
door. Rep. John Sabarnes (D-Md.) is co-sponsoring Jayapal's version of the
law.
Gottleib's move to Pfizer was
also noticed by Public Citizen Health Research Group co-founder Sidney Wolfe.
"This is classic and it's
not surprising," Wolfe told health
news site Stat. "Philosophically, he's returning to the ecosystem
where he's most comfortable. And he'll get paid very well for it, too."
Read Warren's letter:
