{"id":1050513,"date":"2024-12-17T13:28:50","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T18:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/democrats.org\/?p=1050513"},"modified":"2024-12-17T13:28:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T18:28:51","slug":"icymi-trumps-businesses-could-present-conflicts-of-interest-make-the-presidency-vulnerable-to-foreign-influence-and-violate-federal-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-trumps-businesses-could-present-conflicts-of-interest-make-the-presidency-vulnerable-to-foreign-influence-and-violate-federal-law\/","title":{"rendered":"ICYMI: Trump\u2019s Businesses \u201cCould Present Conflicts of Interest, Make the Presidency Vulnerable to Foreign Influence, and Violate Federal Law\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"341\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/image.png?w=1024\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1038290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/image.png 1500w, https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/image.png?resize=300,100 300w, https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/image.png?resize=768,256 768w, https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/image.png?resize=1024,341 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Key Point:<\/strong> \u201cIf [Trump] continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns. Consumer goods may be the least of Trump\u2019s issues, however. He has a number of business ventures \u2014 including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization\u2019s partnerships in the Middle East \u2014 that could present conflicts of interest, make the presidency vulnerable to foreign influence, and violate federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/391338\/trump-business-truth-social-crypto-liv-hotel-conflicts\"><strong>Vox<\/strong><\/a><strong>: Trump\u2019s for-profit presidency<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By Nicole Narea<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>If [Trump] continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns. Consumer goods may be the least of Trump\u2019s issues, however. He has a number of business ventures \u2014 including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization\u2019s partnerships in the Middle East \u2014 that could present conflicts of interest, make the presidency vulnerable to foreign influence, and violate federal law.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While President Jimmy Carter famously put his peanut farm in a blind trust, Trump had his sons take over the Trump Organization when he became president in 2016. <strong>His global business empire reaped $2.4 billion in revenue, including from foreign governments, in the four years<\/strong> that followed. Government ethics organizations consequently sued him, claiming that <strong>he had violated the foreign emoluments clause<\/strong>, but the litigation was never resolved before he left office.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Now, that <strong>litigation may be reprised<\/strong>, potentially providing harder limits on presidents\u2019 ability to benefit financially from their time in office.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Overall, the government oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) estimated that Trump benefited from about $13.6 million in payments from foreign governments during his first term<\/strong> as a result.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chief among these conflicts of interest is his stake in the publicly traded parent company of Truth Social, the president-elect\u2019s social media platform. [&#8230;] <strong>Never before has a president had such a significant stake in a publicly traded company, and for good reason<\/strong>: Foreign actors could easily and entirely legally buy up its stock, inflating its value and Trump\u2019s net worth. Not only that, they could also \u201cthreaten to just dump all their shares at once, which would crater his net worth,\u201d giving them potentially a <strong>\u201chuge amount of leverage over the president,\u201d<\/strong> said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for CREW.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Trump Organization has also recently struck a series of deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars to construct luxury hotels and properties in Saudi Arabia<\/strong>, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as established a partnership with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf. That has <strong>drawn Trump into an even closer relationship with the Saudis<\/strong>, which dates back to 2017 when he made the country stop number one on his first overseas trip as president.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Libowitz raised concerns about a <strong>$30 million investment in [Trump\u2019s World Liberty Financial] from Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun<\/strong>, who is currently fighting fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. <strong>Trump and his family are expected to net roughly $20 million<\/strong> thanks to that deal, according to the BBC. Notably, <strong>Trump has recently nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to head the SEC.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Point: \u201cIf [Trump] continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns. Consumer goods may be the least of Trump\u2019s issues, however. He has a number of business ventures \u2014 including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization\u2019s partnerships in the Middle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ICYMI: Trump\u2019s Businesses \u201cCould Present Conflicts of Interest, Make the Presidency Vulnerable to Foreign Influence, and Violate Federal Law\u201d - Democrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-trumps-businesses-could-present-conflicts-of-interest-make-the-presidency-vulnerable-to-foreign-influence-and-violate-federal-law\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Democrats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-12-17T18:28:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-12-17T18:28:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/image.png?w=1024\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Adrianna Tomasello\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Adrianna Tomasello\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-trumps-businesses-could-present-conflicts-of-interest-make-the-presidency-vulnerable-to-foreign-influence-and-violate-federal-law\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-trumps-businesses-could-present-conflicts-of-interest-make-the-presidency-vulnerable-to-foreign-influence-and-violate-federal-law\/\",\"name\":\"ICYMI: Trump\u2019s Businesses \u201cCould Present Conflicts of Interest, Make the Presidency Vulnerable to Foreign Influence, and Violate Federal Law\u201d - 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