Donald Trump claimed this week he would remove himself from his business operations in a bid to address the unprecedented conflicts of interest that would follow him to the presidency.
Little is known about how exactly Trump plans to distance himself from his sprawling empire, which owns hotels and golf resorts and businesses including a winery and modeling agency, and whether his plans would truly be enough to avoid placing his private and public interests on a collision course.
What exactly is Donald Trump proposing?
It’s not entirely clear. The president-elect tweeted on Wednesday that he would be leaving his business “in total”, and he said he would hold a press conference to discuss the matter on 15 December.
Trump said legal documents were being prepared to take him “completely out of business operations”, because it was “visually important” there be no conflicts of interest when he takes office.
Notable in Trump’s announcement was his plan to have his adult children attend the press conference with him. Trump’s transition team has stated in the past that Trump will relinquish the day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization to three of his children: Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr.
Would that be a blind trust?
Trump has sometimes described placing his children in charge of the family business as a blind trust. But legal and ethics experts have said that this would fall short of a true blind trust.
While the law does not require it, elected officials traditionally divest themselves from holdings or assets that would be subject to potential conflicts of interest while serving in public office.
Trump has declined to do so, leaving him with the option of setting up a true blind trust operated by a lawyer or trustee to mitigate concerns. But in order for a blind trust to properly function, Trump should have no contact during his presidency with the individual overseeing the management of his assets.
Trump’s children are not only in regular contact with him, but were also named in top roles on his transition team.
Just last month, Trump’s daughter Ivanka set off alarm bells by sitting in on a meeting between her father and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Jared Kushner, who is Ivanka’s husband and is rumored to be taking on a prominent job in the Trump administration, also attended the meeting.
Ivanka and brother Eric subsequently joined their father at a meeting with business associates from India. There are at least 20 countries where the Trumps do business.
What is the legal position here?
Since his unexpected victory, Trump has sounded a note of defiance regarding the legality of continuing with his business operations in tandem with the presidency. “The law’s totally on my side, the president can’t have a conflict of interest,” he told the New York Times.
While it is true that some rules on conflict of interest for executive branch employees do not apply to the president, Trump will be bound by bribery laws, disclosure requirements and a section of the US constitution known as the “emoluments clause” that bans elected officials from taking gifts from foreign governments.
Trump has framed his stated intention to step back from the Trump Organization as something he is doing for the good of the country, rather than out of necessity.
But the US Office of Government Ethics, the federal agency tasked with oversight of conflicts of interest laws among elected officials, maintains that divestiture is the “only way” for Trump to truly put the issue to rest.
Former White House ethics counsels agree. Richard Painter, a chief ethics counsel to President George W Bush, said Trump must sell his businesses or risk violating the “emoluments clause”.
“Foreign diplomats staying in hotels, parties thrown by foreign governments in hotels, loans from the Bank of China, rent paid by foreign governments and companies controlled by foreign governments in office buildings, etc” would all pose a risk for him, Painter told the Guardian.
If Trump does say he will remove himself from all his holdings, will we be able to tell?
The lack of public information about Trump’s finances renders it difficult to truly examine any action he might take on this front, short of clear divestiture.
During the presidential race, Trump broke with a 40-year tradition among major-party candidates by refusing to release his tax returns. This left the public, and the media, without a clear portrait of his finances, business partners, payments and loans. Because Trump’s eponymous conglomerate is privately held, there is also no requirement that it disclose its assets.
Absent financial transparency, the possibility of Trump using the office of the presidency to bolster his businesses could continue to exist, even with his children in charge.
Have there been any signs of him doing that so far?
There have already been several examples since the election that have triggered concerns over whether Trump has any intention of separating his privately run business from his soon-to-be official business.
In a meeting last month, Trump asked the Ukip leader Nigel Farage to oppose the building of wind farms near his golf course in Scotland – reportedly because Trump was concerned such activity would spoil the property’s view. There was also the meeting with the Indian real estate executives, shortly after the election, who are developing a Trump-branded property in Mumbai.
Congressional Democrats sought answers this week pertaining to another possible conflict of interest: a contract Trump signed three years ago to lease the government-owned Old Post Office for his new hotel in Washington.
Both House and Senate Democrats pointed out that a clause in the lease specifically stated that no elected official of the US government should benefit from the agreement. Now that Trump is president-elect, they argued, he would in effect become “landlord and tenant at the same time” and thus violate federal government regulations.
The Democrats also pointed to a reception at the Trump International Hotel in DC, booked for next month by the Kingdom of Bahrain, as further evidence of conflicts of interest that are expected to grow with the property openly encouraging foreign diplomats to stay there while traveling to Washington on official business.
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