Example 1 to paragraph (a): Following confirmation hearings and one month before their scheduled swearing in, a nominee to the position of Assistant Secretary of a department received a covered payment from their employer. For one year and 11 months after their swearing in, the Assistant Secretary may not participate in any particular matter to which the former employer is a party.
Example 2 paragraph (a): An employee received a covered payment from their former employer, a coal mine operator, prior to entering on duty with the Department of the Interior. For two years thereafter, the employee may not participate in a determination regarding the former employer's obligation to reclaim a particular mining site, because the former employer is a party to the matter. However, the employee may help to draft reclamation legislation affecting all coal mining operations because this legislation does not involve any parties.
Example 3 to paragraph (a): An architect accepts a position with the Army Corps of Engineers and resigns from a private architecture partnership. One month after beginning this new position, the architect receives a covered payment from the partnership. The architect may not participate in any particular matter involving specific parties in which the former partnership is a party until two years after receipt of the covered payment, which will be 25 months after beginning service with the Corps. Because the payment was not received before the architect became an executive branch employee, agency ethics officials must also review the payment to determine whether it constituted a supplementation of salary under 18 U.S.C. 209 .
Example 1 to paragraph (b)(2): The vice president of a small corporation is nominated to be an ambassador. In recognition of service to the corporation, the board of directors votes to pay the departing vice president $50,000 upon confirmation in addition to the regular severance payment provided for by the corporate bylaws. The regular severance payment is not a covered payment because it was made pursuant to a qualifying program. The gratuitous payment of $50,000 is a covered payment, because the corporation had not made similar payments to other departing officers.
Note 1 to paragraph (b)(3):
The definition of former employer includes former clients for whom an employee may have served as an agent, attorney, consultant, or contractor.
5 C.F.R. §2635.503