From the mixing of U.S. policies and special interests, to backing away from transparency in oil and gas, it’s been a “very bad year,” a watchdog group said. Transparency International releases its global corruption indices late in the day Wednesday. In its review last year, which was published less than a week after Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, the group had already moved the United States down two points on its index in part because of concerns that money was influencing policy decisions in the country. Zoë Reiter, a senior project leader for Transparency International, said a gauge of the pulse of American sentiment from as recently as December found a general loss of trust in political institutions. A month later, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke stoked controversy when he told Florida Gov. Rick Scott , a Republican and potential Senate candidate, […]