Ethics officials urged Trump during his campaign to pledge he would sell his businesses or cede them to an independent authority. Many modern presidents — including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and both Bushes — went beyond what was required and placed their assets in “blind trusts,” run by independent trustees who keep complete control.
But Trump has refused to make such a pledge, saying only that he would give companies to his children and executives to run. Attorneys said that would put little distance between a President Trump and the businesses he spent a lifetime grooming and profiting from.
“It’s silly to suggest there’s any avoidance of conflict by having your family run the interests. He talks to his family all the time,” said Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman and general counsel for George H.W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in September.
It’s “unthinkable in recent history,” Potter added, that “there’s the possibility of a president being able to affect his own personal financial interests, conceivably to the detriment of the general public.”
Members of Congress must recuse themselves from government dealings touching on their own financial interests, according to strict regulations in the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, enacted after Watergate. Presidents, however, were made exempt from those rules on the belief they could further complicate the wide-ranging job.
