Watchdogs question Trump’s plans to keep his empire in the family
“This is as intricate a government ethics problem as has ever existed, and I hope he’ll be getting a bunch of experts into a room to figure out how to deal with this.”
.. McGehee said she would advise Trump to “appoint an ethics czar, right now, from the get go, whose job would be to recommend a series of policies that are meant to restore public faith. He ran, obviously, against Washington. So if he’s going to take the reins of power … [he should] have an ethics czar.”
McGehee and others say installing Trump’s adult children as caretakers doesn’t eliminate conflict questions, since he’d still know what his interests were, and he’d presumably still be in contact with his children. What’s more, foreign governments and lenders could seek favor with the president through sweetheart deals with his kids.
.. “Once you don’t sell the businesses — and Trump has given no indication that he’s going to do so — I don’t think he can separate himself. The idea that he’s going to have his family run the businesses and that will address his conflict-of-interest problems is a joke,”
.. The biggest check on potential conflicts, according to ethics lawyers, is a clause of the Constitution that bans U.S. government officials, including the president, from accepting gifts or money from foreign governments without the consent of Congress.