Trump: Corruption and Conflicts of Interests Thread

Repository for links and comments regarding corruption by Trump and those in his family and administration.

From WaPo: Nine questions about President Trump’s businesses and possible conflicts of interest

Here are the nine questions the article provides answers to:

1. Does President Trump still own his company?
2. How many properties does President Trump have his name on?
3. But how many of those buildings does Trump own?
4. Wait, I thought Trump was going to profit off the presidency. Have his businesses actually done better or worse?
5. How much money does the president owe — and who does he owe it to?
6. Is Trump getting business from the federal government? What about from his political supporters?
7. Have foreign governments spent money at Trump properties?
8. Is Trump breaking the law with his business dealings?
9. Has President Trump released his tax returns?
9a. Would we be able to answer all of these questions more clearly if he did?

Good article.

Edit (2/18/2018)

From WaPo: Trump Jr. to give foreign policy speech while on ‘unofficial’ business trip to India

News that the Trump Organization would be offering buyers in the Trump Tower the chance to meet the president’s son sparked criticism of potential conflicts of interest, and the fact that Trump Jr. will be giving a foreign policy speech while on a private business trip complicates the matter further, ethics experts said.

The senior Trump did not divest himself of his businesses when he was elected president. Rather, he turned the day-to-day operations over to his older sons, Don Jr. and Eric, to run. Eric Trump told The Washington Post last year that “the company and policy and government are completely separated. We have built an unbelievable wall in between the two.”

Watchdog groups disagree.

“Trump’s company is literally selling access to the president’s son overseas,” said Jordan Libowitz, the communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is frequently critical of the first family. “For many people wanting to impact American policy in the region, the cost of a condo is a small price to pay to lobby one of the people closest to the president, far away from watchful eyes.”

Critics have often complained of the high cost of Secret Service agents accompanying the Trump children on private business trips, straining the agency’s budget. The Trump Organization’s spokesman did not return requests for comment.

Edit (2/20/2018)

If this alone is an impeachable offense, I think it’s very close. I would guess that there isn’t more outrage because people are just overwhelmed with deluge of bad things and distractions. Maybe they really haven’t thought through the reasons this is so bad. I predict this will be one of the many things future generations will marvel at how many seemed to overlook this.

3/1/2018

3/2/2018

Who knows if Ivanka served the nation’s interests or her own. But at the very least this creates the appearance of corruption, and the conflicts of interest are apparent.

3/7/2018

***

Janet Matricciani, former CEO of payday lending company, World Acceptance, requesting to be next director for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Re: the quote above, here’s what Matricciani said to Mick Mulvaney the Budget director and acting directorof the CFPB

“I have indepth (sic) experience of what a CFPB investigation is like, and so I am in an unparalleled position to understand the effect of various CFPB actions on a company, its workforce, its customers and the industry,” she says.

World Acceptance had been under investigation by the CFPB for three-years over its lending practices after ProPublica published an examination of the company’s lending tactics, finding evidence it repeatedly trapped its customers in debts they could not repay and charged them interest rates higher than what they disclosed when the customers took out the loan. The bureau has said the decision to drop its investigation into World Acceptance was made by career staff, and not by Mulvaney or any other political appointee.

Also,

World Acceptance, one of the nation’s biggest payday lenders, is based in South Carolina and gave Mulvaney thousands of dollars in campaign contributions while he represented the state in Congress.

3/15/2018

As far as I know, big debts also make a person a potential security risk and Jared Kushner–maybe even the Trump–may have some significant outstanding debts.

4/9/2018

Lawyers representing President Trump’s company last month wrote directly to the president of Panama, asking him to intervene in a legal fight over the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital — and warning that the case could have “repercussions” for Panama’s reputation.

and

“It is a letter that urges Panama’s executive branch to interfere in an issue clearly of the judicial branch,” de Saint Malo said. “I don’t believe the executive branch has a position to take while the issue is in the judicial process.”

and

“This situation is currently before the courts, but it has repercussions for the Panamanian state, which is your responsibility,” said the letter, signed by attorney Eric Britton (Britton is attorney for Trump’s business.)

and

The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. President Trump has said he gave up day-to-day control of the business when he took office, but he remains its owner and can withdraw money from it at any time.

And the very least this creates appearance of conflict of interests, and it creates a situation where U.S. government may hurt Panama in some way, if the Panamanian government doesn’t help Trump Organization.

This is beyond Trump enriching himself–This is damaging relationships with other countries and making it impossible for U.S. citizens to feel confident that Trump is acting in the best interests of the country and not himself.

4/19/2018

Edit

Not to state the obvious, but Trump is breaking this law. And if the law doesn’t apply to the President, he’s violating the principle behind the law.

Edit

(Note: I didn’t read the article.)

6/27/2018

8/7/2018

This could have been under the corruption thread. In any event, I’d be surprised if these three advisers don’t make a mess of things at at the VA.

23 thoughts on “Trump: Corruption and Conflicts of Interests Thread”

  1. RNC Complicity

    3/8/2018

    9/12/2018

    1/30/2021

    (Note: I didn’t read the article.)

    Reply

  2. I don’t understand why Senate incumbents think this is a good idea. It’s as if they’re all saying, “Let’s see how far we can actually push this stuff and get away with it.”

    Also, that’s a lot of white guys.

    Reply

  3. One journalist mentioned something about how oligarchs in Russia know that their opportunity to enrich themselves may be limited, because ruler can be overthrown at any moment. Because of that they scramble to enrich themselves, often brazenly. My hypothesis is many of the GOP are behaving in the same way. The odds are decent that after this year many of them may be wiped out. If it’s really bad, the party itself might be near dead. Maybe this isn’t accurate, but it would explain a lot, in my view.

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  4. How are Senate incumbents enriching themselves by spending money at those properties? I don’t get it.

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  5. Think of it this way: the process of enrichment may also involve bribing and catering to the ruler in unethical and illegal ways in order to enrich themselves. The GOP is turning a blind eye to all the conflicts of interests with Trump and his family, including allowing unqualified people like Ivanka and Kushner to handle highly complex foreign policy issues, knowing that the Trump family enriching themselves in the process. In return the GOP get the policies they want, and possibly line their pockets personally (maybe creating a golden parachute in the event the midterms are a bloodbath).

    Reply

  6. Con Man

    From CNN Money: All the Things Donald Trump Said About His Tax Forms (April 17, 2017)

    Mr. Trump complains that his tax returns have been subject to audit — one of the many bogus excuses he has given for keeping them hidden. In fact, he is free to release them even if an audit is taking place. He could certainly also release returns from past years.

    8/24/2018

    Or a late night informercial or a pitch from a self-help charlatan. Also, someone else asked, “What’s ‘4.1?'”

    10/2/2018

    One of my takeaways from this article (based on a more massive investigative piece) is that it shows a pattern of deception, fraud, and the desire to create an appearance of success.

    1/5/2019

    1/28/2019

    I would have less problems (not a lot less, but a little) if Christians who supported Trump didn’t base their support on the belief that Trump was a strong Christian.

    10/11/2019

    Quotes in this thread make Trump sound like a con man.

    10/25/2019

    12/20/2019

    8/2/2020

    Don’t fall for the “in two weeks” con.

    9/4/2020

    9/8/2020

    I can’t believe he’s still pushing this line:

    12/31/2022

    from theAtlantic

    But the revelation about the IRS’s failure to perform the required audit of Trump’s taxes—that it did not happen at all for more than two years, and that, according to the committee, his 2017, 2018, and 2019 tax returns were not even selected for audit until after he left office—deserves yet more scrutiny. The IRS’s own regulations mandate that a president’s taxes must be audited every year. Not only that, but ongoing audits were the purported reason Trump gave for refusing to disclose his tax returns. Spokespeople for President Barack Obama confirmed that his taxes were subject to routine annual audits during his presidency, and a spokesperson for President Joe Biden said that his have been too. The Ways and Means Committee reported that, despite Trump’s complex finances, when review finally began in 2019, the audit was initially assigned to a single employee, and no audits of the years requested by the committee—2015 to 2020—have yet been completed.

    (emphasis added)

    I didn’t realize IRS regulations require presidents to be audited annually.

    On another note, the money Trump either received or owed to other nations was something that really concerned me.

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  7. I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, it doesn’t sound good.

    Reply

    1. Thread, which includes reporting that lead to this final conclusion.

      Reply

    1. I’m guessing it depends on whether they’re Clinton supporters or not. I’d like to think that I would condemn Clinton for this.

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  9. I think this Ezra Klein Show podcast with Adam Davidson is worth listening to, even though it’s quite long. But I suspect you guys won’t listen to it, so I will mention a few details that stood out for me:

    1. Davidson mentions that the Trump organization did business with an Iranian group that has been known to launder money for the Iranian government, which funds terrorism. Davidson expressed surprise that this hasn’t become a bigger deal.

    It’s also important to note that Davidson mentions several examples of the Trump Organization dealing with sketchy individuals and organizations.

    2. Russia has been laundering a lot of money via real estate businesses in the New York and London. How much money? Davidson said that an official told him that they haven’t cracked down on this because it would severely damage the economies of both cities if that they did. To me, this is crazy, but it does explain things–why, perhaps, both the U.S. and U.K. won’t push back hard on Russian oligarchs and Putin, even when Russia uses a nerve agent to kill British citizens on British soil.

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  10. 8/22/2018

    8/24/2018

    Reply

  12. The Cummings report notes that one of the power plant manufacturers that could benefit from a nuclear deal, Westinghouse Electric, is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, the company that provided financial relief to the family of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Brookfield Asset Management took a 99-year lease on the family’s deeply indebted New York City property at 666 Fifth Avenue.

    What’s a little troubling is if this claim by Republicans is true:

    Committee Republicans said Tuesday they were not included in the drafting of the detailed report and had not received a copy until Monday night. They said they had not had a chance to fully assess it.

    “This is a delicate and nuanced issue that Chairman Cummings is approaching without bipartisan input and with far flung requests for information,” Charli Huddleston, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the committee, said in a statement.

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  13. Reply

  14. Blatant, brazen corruption.

    GOP not doing anything essentially means they think none of this warrants the end of a presidency.

    Also, the Air Force refueled at Prestwick Airport, not at Trump resort. But that doesn’t mean the act wasn’t suspect:

    Prestwick Airport has long been debt-ridden. The Scottish government bought it in 2013 for £1, but it has continued to lose money in the years since. In June, the government announced its intent to sell the airport, which the panel’s letter described as “integral” to the success of the Turnberry property, 30 miles away.

    Trump owns Turnberry Resort.

    Also, see this 2014 tweet:

    More on the whole Turnberry story below:

    9/7/2019

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  15. 10/18/2019

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  16. I think a lot, if not most, of the resorts he’s visited he owns–so he’s enriching himself on tax dollars.

    11/14/2020

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  17. Room rentals, resort fees and furniture removal: How Trump’s company charged the U.S. government more than $900,000 from WaPo

    Breathtaking corruption in a very detailed report. Those who were outraged by supposed corruption with the Clinton Foundation should be hopping mad.

    Trump has now visited his own properties 270 times as president, according to a Washington Post tally — with another visit planned for Thursday, when he is scheduled to meet GOP donors at his Washington hotel.

    Through these trips, Trump has brought the Trump Organization a stream of private revenue from federal agencies and GOP campaign groups. Federal spending records show that taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $900,000 since he took office. At least $570,000 came as a result of the president’s travel, according to a Post analysis.

    Reminder of what Trump said and promised during the campaign:

    One set governed the Trump Organization, to keep Trump’s business away from his presidency.

    The company, now led by Trump’s two adult sons, said it would exclude the president from decision-making, refuse any new overseas deals and give back any profits it made from doing business with foreign governments.

    The other set governed Trump personally: He said he would keep his presidency far away from his business.

    President-elect Trump wants there to be no doubt in the minds of the American public that he is completely isolating himself from his business interests,” Sheri Dillon, a Trump lawyer, said at a news conference Trump called in January 2017. “He instructed us to take all steps realistically possible to make it clear that he is not exploiting the office of the presidency for his personal benefit.” (Dillon did not respond to requests for comment for this report.)

    On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump had offered one simple way to underline his separation from his properties: He just wouldn’t visit.

    “I may never see these places again,” Trump said during a rally in August 2016. “Because I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf. Believe me.”

    Later,

    These show that Trump’s pledge to isolate himself did not survive his first two weeks in office. On his 15th day as president, he went to Mar-a-Lago. And the end of his literal isolation also ended his financial isolation: Trump’s visit brought the club a new, deep-pocketed customer.

    Comment from an administration official is damning:

    “His knee-jerk, every single time, was to do things at his own properties,” said the former Trump administration official. “He never really understood that you couldn’t do it. In his mind, he could never understand that you should do it somewhere else.” Like other officials interviewed for this report, the former official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters.

    Edit

    Farenthold doesn’t have DoD records beyond 2017, which makes you wonder how much more DoD funds went into Trump properties.

    10/27/2020

    Another report from WaPo

    Here’s David Fahrenthold talking about it:

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  18. In the last week before Election Day, Trump makes a pitch for his re-election by pointing out…Biden’s corruption and ostensibly nepotism with his son. I put this tweet here, so that one could easily scroll up and see a long list of examples of Trump’s brazen corruption, some of which includes his children.

    Listening to him speak about Biden’s corruption in relation to the examples above (and they’re not exhaustive) is remarkable–particularly the lack of self-awareness and shame; he almost seems delusional. In Trump’s mind, truth is whatever benefits himself and lies are whatever hurts him. Well, that’s what it seems like.

    1/17/2021

    Selling access to Trump to lobby him for pardons

    2/5/2021

    (Note: I didn’t read this yet.)

    Reply

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