As President-elect Trump begins to nominate individuals for Senate-confirmed positions in his administration, one of the major hurdles these individuals face is the statutory requirement that the Director of the Office of Government Ethics (“OGE”) review and certify a public disclosure of each source of income exceeding $200 and each property interest exceeding $1,000 in value.  While for many classes of assets, identifying and disclosing the relevant assets is relatively straightforward, it is often much more difficult to file a compliant report for pooled investment fund assets, such as hedge funds, since the details of the underlying assets are often undisclosed to the investor by the fund manager or subject to a confidentiality agreement between the investor and the fund manager. 

Prior to 2014, OGE maintained a strict “disclose or divest” policy, requiring a nominee to divest their undisclosed assets—regardless of whether or not the filer had access to information about the fund’s underlying holdings—unless the fund qualified as an “excepted investment fund.” This strict policy, OGE recognized, “can conflict, for no substantive reason, with the goal of attracting and placing talented professionals in public service.” Thus, in 2014, OGE issued revised guidance clarifying that the investor may not be required to “disclose or divest” if either (1) a fund is an “excepted investment fund” or (2) if the investor has no access to information on certain underlying assets, which allows OGE to certify that the investor may report only what is known about the fund.