Washington — The White House’s page listing financial disclosure forms for President Trump and top White House officials went offline without explanation Friday afternoon, only to be restored after CBS News inquired about its removal.
The page, whitehouse.gov/disclosures, serves as a hub for various disclosures required by law, including the president’s annual financial disclosure form and periodic stock transaction reports. It includes financial records for the president, vice president and more than 100 White House staffers, including Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller.
CBS News uses an automated system to monitor ethics disclosures across the government, including those posted on the White House page. The system checks for new filings every 30 minutes. The White House hub was still operational as of 3:01 p.m. Friday, but returned a 404 error at the next routine check at 3:31 p.m., indicating it had been taken down. The disclosure documents themselves were still online.
At 4:20 p.m., CBS News asked the White House press office in an email whether the page had been intentionally removed or whether it was down due to a technical error. CBS News requested a response by 5 p.m. The White House did not reply.
As CBS News prepared a story on the page’s removal, the automated ethics monitor flagged that it was back online, having been restored sometime between 4:31 and 5:01 p.m. The publish time in the source code of the White House page was 22:00:00+00:00, or 5:00:00 p.m. ET.
The White House did not respond to a request for clarification about why the page went down or why it was restored.
When the page came back online, there was one new file listed: a report on the president’s stock trades that he signed on Sept. 17. That same report has been publicly available on the website of an agency known as the Office of Government Ethics since Oct. 8. Data from the White House server show it was uploaded at 3:14 p.m. The White House has previously posted stock reports within a few days from when they were posted on OGE’s site.
The financial disclosures listed on the page are required to be filed under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, and the periodic stock reports under the 2012 STOCK Act. The president and vice president file their reports with OGE, and copies of reports from top-ranking White House aides and Senate-confirmed officials are also sent to the agency.
But other White House staffers’ reports stay with the White House, and many of their reports have not appeared on OGE’s website. In September, CBS News found that more than 110 of the roughly 180 officials listed on the White House page did not appear in OGE’s online records.
The president’s financial disclosures have revealed thousands of stock transactions his accounts have made since the beginning of the year, including many involving companies that have had business before the government or are directly impacted by his policies. The White House has said the president is not involved in managing his portfolio and that his money is handled by outside financial advisers.
