Exhibit A, of course, is the president. Trump has heaps of conflicts at home and abroad, largely linked to brand licensing and hotel and golf operations. He’s also the first president since Gerald Ford not to make his tax returns publicly available.
As president, Trump has done little to meaningfully distance himself from the Trump Organization. His two eldest sons and his chief financial officer oversee a trust that looks after his stake in the business; Trump’s family and lawyers have said the arrangement is adequate for keeping the president in the dark about the company. Yet Trump’s sons are in frequent contact with him. One of them, Eric, has said they brief him on the company’s earnings. Allen Weisselberg, the CFO, has worked for the Trumps since the 1970s and never made a major financial decision without Trump’s blessing. He also just cut an immunity deal with federal prosecutors investigating campaign finance violations involving Cohen, the president’s former lawyer.
Trump’s portfolio is a mass of ethical fault lines. His foreign policy inevitably intersects with his enterprises in places such as Dubai, Indonesia, and India. He’s often borrowed heavily to fund developments and has openly pressed the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low; he signed a large federal tax cut with provisions that kept tax payments low for real estate developers like him. He also owes more than $300 million to Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank AG—financial-services companies regulated by his administration.
The president still owns a hotel in Washington, the Trump International, which is about as gilded as it gets. The property sits atop federal land that Trump leases from the very government he’s running. It’s also become a hub for diplomats, politicians, and lobbyists. What better way to curry favor with the president than to spend money at his hotel? A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit to proceed that argues the hotel represents a violation of the emoluments clause—the provision in the Constitution that prohibits the president from receiving anything from a foreign government that might constitute a bribe.
