White House Restores Financial Disclosure Page Following CBS News Inquiry

POLICY WIRE — Washington, U.S. — The White House website hosting financial disclosure records for President Trump and high-ranking officials vanished online on Friday afternoon. The site reappeared only after CBS News sought comment regarding its sudden disappearance.

Located at whitehouse.gov/disclosures, the page provides public access to legally mandated documents, including the president’s yearly financial filings and reports on stock transactions. The directory contains financial data for the president, the vice president, and over 100 staff members, including figures like Stephen Miller and Susie Wiles.

CBS News utilizes an automated monitoring tool to track government ethics filings, checking the White House hub every 30 minutes. While the site was functional at 3:01 p.m. Friday, the subsequent routine check at 3:31 p.m. returned a 404 error, though the individual disclosure documents remained accessible online during the interval.

At 4:20 p.m., CBS News messaged the White House press office to ask if the removal was intentional or the result of a technical glitch. A request for a response by 5:00 p.m. went unacknowledged by the White House staff.

As reporters developed the story on the outage, the ethics monitor detected that the page had returned between 4:31 p.m. and 5:01 p.m. Metadata in the page’s code indicated the restoration occurred at exactly 5:00 p.m. ET.

The White House has not provided an explanation for why the page was offline or why it was subsequently reinstated.

Upon its return, the page featured one new entry: a report regarding stock trades signed by the president on Sept. 17. This specific document had been live on the Office of Government Ethics website since Oct. 8. Server data shows the White House uploaded the file at 3:14 p.m., and historically, the administration posts these reports within a few days of them appearing on the OGE site.

These financial records are required by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, while periodic stock reports are governed by the 2012 STOCK Act. While the president and vice president submit directly to the OGE, copies for top-tier aides and Senate-confirmed officials are also forwarded to the agency.

However, reports for many other staffers are kept internally by the White House and frequently do not appear on the OGE website. In September, CBS News noted that more than 110 of the 180 individuals listed on the White House site were absent from official OGE records.

Public filings for the president have documented thousands of stock trades made this year, some involving companies with business ties to the government or those affected by his policy decisions. The White House maintains that the president does not manage his own portfolio and that outside advisors handle his finances.

Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)