Today President-Elect Trump took to Twitter in an attempt to assure the world he will not let it look like he is making money off the Presidency.
Via the New York Times:
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a liberal nonprofit group that promotes ethics in government, said: “Unless his solution is to sell the business outside the family and put the proceeds in a blind trust, he’s not really doing anything to solve the problem. Just because you say something on Twitter doesn’t make it so.”
It remains unclear what the president-elect’s plan will look like, but simply removing Mr. Trump from operational, day-to-day control of business decisions still could allow him to benefit financially from payments made to his companies by foreign governments, which may be prohibited by the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution, Mr. Eisen said.
And Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts said nothing about whether his children — who serve as advisers on his presidential transition committee — would continue to have roles in his administration.
If the business is run by his children, they must be entirely separated from government operations, Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter said. That means they could not participate in meetings with world leaders, like the prime minister of Japan, as Ivanka Trump did this month.
“Without an ethics firewall that is set up at once and continues into the administration, scandal is sure to follow,” their statement said.
Aides to Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to requests for more detail. Reince Priebus, who will be the White House chief of staff, said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that he was not ready to provide any more information about the legal discussions.
