Despite what the liberal mainstream media would like you to believe, President-elect Donald Trump’s entire family is going to extraordinary lengths to avoid conflicts of interest in his new administration.
And there’s no law that requires them to do any of it.
“The conflicts of interest laws simply do not apply to the president or the vice president, and they are not required to separate themselves from their financial assets,” the attorney who crafted the president-elect’s plan, Sheri Dillon, said during Wednesday’s press conference. “The primary conflict of interest statute, and some have questioned it, is Section 18 USC 208, and it’s simply inapplicable by its terms. And this is not just our interpretation.
“It’s Congress itself who has made this clear in 1989 when it amended Section 18 USC 202 to state that, except as otherwise provided, the terms ‘office’ and ’employee’ in section 208 shall not include the president.”
The plan Dillon spelled out applies only to the president-elect’s role with the company he built from the ground up, the Trump Organization, and its many subsidiaries. Left out of the new leadership team that will guide the company in trust through the presidency was his oldest daughter, Ivanka.
Although her husband, Jared Kushner, will take on a role as a senior adviser to the White House, and as a result has divested himself of his own business interests, she doesn’t have any obligation whatsoever to follow suit. But, according to a statement she released via her official Facebook account, she is also going above and beyond what the law requires.
Here’s what she wrote:
When my father takes office as the 45th President of the United States of America, I will take a formal leave of absence from The Trump Organization and my eponymous apparel and accessories brand. I will no longer be involved with the management or operations of either company.
I have appointed Abigail Klem as president to lead my brand. She will work with a board of trustees to manage the strategic and day-to-day operations of the business; I am confident that under her leadership, the company will continue creating smart, solution-oriented product and content. My brothers will oversee The Trump Organization, and I know that in their capable hands the business will thrive.
My husband, Jared, and I will be moving with our family to Washington, D.C., where Jared will serve as senior adviser to the president. I plan to take time to settle our three young children into their new home and schools.
I’m grateful for the overwhelming amount of outreach I’ve received from people all across America who have shared their stories and offered to extend their ideas and expertise in the areas I am deeply passionate about, including the education and empowerment of women and girls; leveling the playing field for female entrepreneurs and job creators and unleashing the potential of women in the workplace. I am eager to hear more from them as I determine the most impactful and appropriate ways for me to serve our country.
Thank you to those of you who’ve lent your voices and perspective. To those of you I’ve yet to meet, I look forward to working with you and for you.
Also, here is Dillon’s explanation of how the president-elect will sever himself from his business interests during his time in office:
First, President-elect Trump’s investments and business assets commonly known as the—as the Trump Organization, comprising hundreds of entities which, again, if you all go and take a look at his financial disclosure statement, the pages and pages and pages of entities have all been or will be conveyed to a trust prior to January 20th. Here is just some of the paperwork that’s taking care of those actions.
Second, through the trust agreement, he has relinquished leadership and management of the Trump Organization to his sons Don and Eric and a longtime Trump executive, Allen Weisselberg. Together, Don, Eric and Allen will have the authority to manage the Trump Organization and will make decisions for the duration of the presidency without any involvement whatsoever by President-elect Trump.
Further, at the president-elect’s direction, the trust agreement provides—that to ensure the Trump Organization continues to operate in accordance with the highest and legal ethics standards, an ethics adviser will be appointed to the management team. The written approval of the ethics adviser will be required for new deals, actions and transactions that could potentially raise ethics or conflicts of interest concerns.
President-elect Trump as well as Don, Eric and Allen are committed to ensuring that the activities of the Trump organization are beyond reproach and cannot be perceived to be exploitive of the office of the presidency. President-elect Trump will resign from all officer and other positions he holds with the Trump Organization entities.
Further, in addition, his daughter Ivanka will have no further involvement with or management authority whatsoever with the Trump Organization. As she and Jared move their family to D.C., Ivanka will focused on settling her children into their new homes and their new schools.
The president-elect has also already disposed of all of his investments in publicly traded or easily liquidated investments. As a result, the trust will have two types of assets; first, it will hold liquid assets. Cash, cash equivalents and treasuries and perhaps some positions in a government approved diversified portfolio, one that is consistent with the regulations from the Office of Government Ethics.
Second, the trust is going to hold his preexisting illiquid, but very valuable business assets, the ones that everyone here is familiar with. Trump owned, operated and branded golf clubs, commercial rental property, resorts, hotels, rights to royalties from preexisting licenses of Trump-Marks Productions and Goods. Things like Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, all of his other business assets, 40 Wall Street will all be in the trust.
Through instructions in the trust agreement … President-elect Trump first ordered that all pending deals be terminated. This impacted more than 30 deals, many of which were set to close by the end of 2016. As you can well imagine, that caused an immediate financial loss of millions of dollars, not just for President-elect Trump, but also for Don, Ivanka and Eric.
The trust agreement as directed by President Trump imposes severe restrictions on new deals. No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency. New domestic deals will be allowed, but they will go through a vigorous vetting process.
The president-elect will have no role in deciding whether the Trump Organization engages in any new deal, and he will only know of a deal if he reads it in the paper or sees it on TV. Because any new deal could—and I emphasize could—be perceived as causing a conflict or as exploiting the office of the presidency, new deals must be vetted with the ethics adviser, whose role will be to analyze any potential transactions for conflicts and ethics issues.
The ethics adviser will be a recognized expert in the field of government experts. Again, his role will be to scrutinize the new deals and the actions, and any new deal must receive written approval.
To further reinforce the wall that we are building between President-elect Trump and the Trump Organization, President-elect Trump has ordered, through his trust agreement, to sharply limit his information rights. Reports will only be available and reflect profit and loss on the company as a whole. There will be no separate business-by-business accounting.
Another step that President-elect Trump has taken is he created a new position at the Trump Organization; the position of chief compliance counsel, whose responsibility will be to ensure that the Trump businesses, again, are operating at the highest levels of integrity and not taking any actions that could be perceived as exploiting the office of the presidency.
He has also directed that no communications of the Trump Organization, including social media accounts, will reference or be tied to President-elect Trump’s role as president of the United States or the office of the presidency.
In sum, all of these actions—complete relinquishment of management, no foreign deals, ethics adviser approval of deals, sharply limited information rights—will sever President-elect Trump’s presidency from the Trump Organization. {eoa}
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