CONFLICT OF INTEREST/ETHICS/TRUMP BUSINESS: “A new report documents 64 politicians, interest groups, corporations and entities affiliated with foreign governments that used Trump-branded properties in the past year.
The report released Tuesday [1-16-18] by Public Citizen, a liberal-funded watchdog group based in Washington, comes about a year after President Donald Trump stepped away from day-to-day management of the Trump Organization. Mr. Trump retained financial interest in the company through a trust and can draw money from it at any time.
Government-ethics specialists say that because the president continues to profit from his business interests, it is important to catalog who is spending money at them. The Trump Organization, now led by Mr. Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric Trump, is a global real-estate development, property management and licensing company.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment and referred questions to the Trump Organization. The company didn’t reply to requests for comment. Mr. Trump and White House officials have previously disputed that his financial ties to his company posed any ethics challenges.
A group of lawyers including several ex-White House ethics counselors sued the president alleging he is violating a clause of the U.S. Constitution that prohibits officials from accepting payments from foreign and domestic governments… The Trump Organization said it would transfer profits earned from foreign government payments by guests at his hotel properties to the U.S. Treasury, but the company has declined to provide information about how it tracks that money. A spokeswoman for the Trump Hotel Group said last month that the company expects to have information to share at the end of February.”
-Julie Bykowicz, “Checking In: Report Lists Dozens of Groups That Used Trump Properties,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 16, 2018 12:01am