President-elect Donald Trump, whose global business deals pose major ethical challenges, scratched plans Monday for a "major news conference" on Thursday to disclose how he would avoid conflicts of interest in the White House.
Legal advisers to the president-in-waiting need more time to structure arrangements for a withdrawal from his business empire, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said.
"With so many iconic properties and successful entities, moving the announcement to January ensures the legal team has ample time to implement the proper protocols so his sole focus will remain on the country and achieving his ambitious agenda with the help of the world-class Cabinet he has built," Hicks said in an email.
Government watchdogs say Trump risks miring his presidency in scandal if he fails to isolate himself from his business more aggressively than what he has outlined in public remarks.
Trump's business deals in Turkey, the Philippines, Scotland, India, Argentina and other nations could jeopardize the integrity of U.S. foreign policy, critics say.
On Nov. 30, Trump said he and his children would hold a major news conference Dec. 15 to talk about "leaving my great business in total."
"While I am not mandated to do this under the law," he wrote on Twitter, "I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses. Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations."
In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Trump said his adult children would run the Trump Organization, but he would have "nothing to do with management."
Asked about foreign interests trying to curry favor by doing business with the president's family, Trump said he was already "turning down billions of dollars of deals."
"I'm not going to be doing deals at all," he said. "Now that would be _ I don't even know if that's a conflict. I mean, I have the right to do it. You know, under the law, I have the right to do it. I just don't want to do it."
"I turned down seven deals with one big player _ great player _ last week, because I thought it could be perceived as a conflict of interest," Trump added. "Probably a billion dollars of deals that I turned down."
Trump said with his children in charge, it would be "totally different."
"They're not president," he said. "But they're not going to do it either. Oh, I see what you're getting at. No. They're not making deals either, for my company."
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit that tends to favor Democrats, said it was "a little worrying that Trump has pushed his plan to deal with conflicts of interest to some unnamed time in the future."
"Hopefully this is a signal that he's taking the issue very seriously and putting together a plan to deal with the myriad of conflicts his business brings by selling the business and putting the proceeds in a true blind trust, rather than using this as a stall tactic like he did to avoid releasing his tax returns after promising them," he said.
