Robert Walker Talks About Paul Ryan’s Financial Disclosures

Robert L. Walker, former chief counsel to the House and Senate ethics committees and an attorney in Wiley Rein’s Election Law & Government Ethics Practice, was quoted in a USA Today article after GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan amended two years of his financial disclosure statements to add an income-producing trust worth upwards of $5 million.

USA Today reported that “the trust, an inheritance of Ryan’s wife, former Washington lobbyist Janna Little Ryan, represents one of the couple's largest assets. Letters and amendments Ryan filed June 6 with the Clerk of the House show the trust produced income of between $15,001 and $50,000 in 2010, and between $100,001 and $1 million last year.”

While critics have charged Mr. Ryan with a lack of transparency, Mr. Walker said the omission was not a serious matter. “It certainly doesn't appear on the face of anything that's been filed, including the forms and the letters, that this was anything other than inadvertent,” Mr. Walker said, while noting that many members of Congress file amendments to their annual financial disclosure filings.