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At a press conference on January 11, 2017, President-elect Donald Trump explained for the first time how he would handle the many conflicts of interest that his business empire posed for his new role. His company, the Trump Organization, collected money from all over the world for luxury condos, hotel rentals, development projects, and club memberships, and he had made deals that put his name on everything from mail-order steaks to get-rich-quick courses. Could citizens trust him to put the common good ahead of personal profit? How would he assure Americans that payments to his business weren’t doubling as payoffs?
A journalist asked Trump if he would release his tax returns, as Presidents had done for decades. Trump said no, and then explained just how unconstrained he felt by such conventions. He’d recently learned that the President, being beholden only to the voters, is subject to none of the regulations that restrict subordinate officials from conducting private business on the side. He called the loophole “a no-conflict-of-interest provision,” as if it were a perk of his employment contract.
To illustrate just how glaring a conflict the law allowed him, Trump volunteered that, during the transition, he’d entertained a two-billion-dollar offer “to do a deal in Dubai.” The offer had come from Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati real-estate tycoon with close ties to his country’s rulers. Trump emphasized that he “didn’t have to turn it down.” Nevertheless, he’d passed, because he didn’t “want to take advantage of something”; he disliked “the way that looks.” Therefore, he continued, his eldest sons, Donald, Jr., and Eric, would assume daily management of his businesses until he left office.
Trump then turned things over to Sheri Dillon, one of his tax lawyers, who argued that he could hardly be expected to do more than the temporary handover. Trump would not “destroy the company he built.” Since Trump’s star turn on the NBC reality show “The Apprentice,” the Trump Organization had mainly sold the use of his name. Most of its profits came from developers who flew the Trump flag over buildings that he didn’t build or own, or from businesses that used his name to sell shirts, mattresses, or pizza. If Trump tried to off-load his whole company, Dillon explained, a buyer might overpay in order “to curry favor with the President,” or, just as worrisome, might demean the highest office in the land by crassly cashing in on the President’s name. Trump and his family, Dillon declared, would never do anything that might “be perceived to be exploitive of the office of the Presidency.”
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