An aide to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos could be in prison for violating ethics rules, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on Wednesday.
Robert Eitel, a senior counselor to DeVos, was simultaneously employed earlier this year by both the Department of Education and Bridgepoint Education, an operator of for-profit colleges.
Warren said that Eitel’s agency work on student debt rules between February and April might run afoul of the criminal code.
“This set of rules applied to the [sic] Mr. Eitel from the day of his appointment at the Department until April 5th, when he formally resigned from Bridgepoint, because they concerned his then-current outside employer,” Warren said in a letter sent on Tuesday and publicly released Wednesday.
The senator noted that willful violators of the law face up to five years in prison.
At the heart of Warren’s allegations was a June 21 letter from department officials declaring Eitel’s work on “defense to repayment” as compliant with “the conflict of interest statute.”
Defense to repayment rules would’ve allowed debt forgiveness when for-profit colleges deceive applicants.
The rules, which were finalized by the Obama administration and set to take effect in July, were yanked two weeks beforehand by DeVos. She also announced her intention to re-write the guidelines.
Warren noted that conflicts of interest laws prohibit the involvement of officials in any “particular matter” that could involve self-dealing, and not just in specific cases involving an associate.
She cited multiple Bridgepoint disclosures decrying the Obama defense to repayment rules. One as recent as March declared that the enactment of the framework would “have a material adverse effect on enrollment and our revenues.”
Eitel is co-chair of a secretive, White House-mandated regulatory reform task force. He also co-authored a May “Progress Report” on agency-level pushes for deregulation. Defense to repayment was cited in the paper as something ripe “for repeal, replacement, or modification,” as Warren noted.
“Given this information and the Department’s failure to require his recusal, it appears highly likely that Mr. Eitel was involved in the implementation and delay of the borrower defense rule before April 5, when he was still employed at Bridgepoint,” she said.
Eitel found himself on Warren’s radar not long after he was hired. In March, she questioned DeVos over his conflicts of interest in a letter that mentioned Taylor Hansen, a for-profit college lobbyist who had also been hired by DeVos. Hansen resigned the same day that Warren sent the letter.
