Of all the issues facing the president-elect and his brain trust, the question of how to avoid conflicts of interest with his global business may be the thorniest.
It’s already raising real questions — over diplomats who opted to stay at a Trump hotel to maybe score points, and the Indian business partners who visited with the prez-elect last week, even as he’s charting out strategy, policies and personnel for his administration.
And while some federal ethics laws don’t apply to the president, some prohibitions are in the Constitution itself. More important: Even the appearance of monetizing the presidency as another Trump brand would be outrageous.
Nor is it only the White House that will need to take care: Trump Organization execs can’t be seen to be milking the presidency in any way, either.
To be fair, Trump’s presidency will impose serious costs on his company: Every project with his name on it must now consider itself a prime target not only for protesters and investigative reporters (the Washington Post and the New York Times are surely assembling their teams), but also for terrorists.
The future chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said over the weekend that the White House counsel will make sure the new president avoids all conflicts of interest with his business ventures, promising, “Those matters are going to be clearly spelled out, and you’re going to be aware of it.”
Trump’s biggest fans will be fine no matter what; his hard-core critics won’t be happy unless he donates everything to Planned Parenthood. But most Americans are in the middle, wondering just how his team is going to resolve this. Priebus needs to spell it out well before Inauguration Day.
Last week, our colleagues at the Wall Street Journal suggested the best way to deal with it all is simply to sell the company. That could be tough on the Trump family: A fire sale could cost them billions.
Maybe the president-elect was on the right track when he promised to put his interests in a “blind trust” — but one run by his children won’t pass the sniff test.
After all, if the election had gone the other way, we’d right now be furiously denouncing the idea of letting Chelsea run the Clinton Foundation.