Tag: the trump organization
Conflict Of Interest? Trump Delays Announcement On Separation From His Business

Conflict Of Interest? Trump Delays Announcement On Separation From His Business

(Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has delayed until January an announcement originally set for this week on how he plans to step back from running his business empire to avoid conflicts of interest, his spokesman said on Monday.

Among Trump’s holdings are hotels and golf resorts from Panama to Scotland, besides a winery and modeling agency. Legal experts say the only way he could entirely avoid conflicts of interest would be to sell his global holdings.

Last month Trump said he would hold a news conference on Thursday to spell out how he would separate himself “in total” from his worldwide business holdings.

“The announcement will be in January,” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday, without giving any reason. The Republican president-elect has not held a news conference since winning the Nov. 8 election.

After Trump’s victory, his company, the Trump Organization, said it was looking at new business structures with the goal of transferring control to Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, three of his children who are involved with the company.

In a series of messages on social network Twitter, Trump said he would leave his businesses before taking office on Jan. 20, to focus on the presidency.

“Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them,” Trump tweeted late on Monday. “No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.”

The messages did not mention a role for Ivanka Trump in the businesses. Trump added that he would hold a news conference in the “near future” to discuss business matters, his cabinet picks and other topics.

In a series of tweets last month, Trump said, “Legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations.” He did not say what the planned change might mean for ownership of his businesses.

IMAGE: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 27, 2016.  REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

 

Mainstream Outlets Rush To Amplify Trump

Mainstream Outlets Rush To Amplify Trump

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Media allowed President-elect Donald Trump to, once again, take over the news narrative with his Twitter activity — this time with a series of vague tweets in which he claimed he would be leaving his business to avoid conflicts of interest. The announcement, however, provides no details about what will become of his business holdings and distracts from news that highlights the degree to which those holdings are ripe for future conflicts.

In a series of tweets on November 30, Trump announced that he will be “holding a major news conference” on December 15 to discuss his plans for “leaving” his “great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country.” Trump added that while he is “not mandated” to “do this under any law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake pointed out, “The only real news in those Trump tweets is that he’ll actually be doing a press conference,” given that Trump has already said that he would hand off management of his businesses to his children. The tweets included no new information on how Trump’s business dealings would be handled after he, allegedly, leaves them behind. But that reality didn’t stop media from making a story out of the tweets and leading with it.

USA Today:

CNN:

The Associated Press:

ABC News:

CBS News:

NBC News:

The tweets do nothing to squash mounting concerns over the conflicts of interest Trump could face as president, and it’s unclear whether his promised response would address these conflicts. Shortly after the election, a Trump Organization spokesperson told CNN that Trump was planning to transfer “‘management of The Trump Organization and its portfolio of businesses to Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump,’” his children. But as ethics experts explained to Politico, “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.”

With his tweetstorm, Trump also continued his pattern of hijacking the media narrative when it suits him. In this case, Trump’s tweets give media outlets an excuse to downplay or ignore reports about the “ethical concerns” raised after the Kingdom of Bahrain reserved space in Trump’s D.C. hotel. Trump also used his tweets to continue to disseminate information on his own terms, which in the past has allowed him to avoid hard interviews and limit his press conferences.

Media are falling into Trump’s trap again by giving his tweets the front-page treatment.

IMAGE: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump walks off his plane at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., September 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Too Little, Too Late: Media Finally See Trump’s Potential Conflicts

Too Little, Too Late: Media Finally See Trump’s Potential Conflicts

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters. 

New York Times editors and reporters might’ve thought they were going to be congratulated by readers for Sunday’s front-page, six-reporter expose on President-elect Donald Trump’s nearly endless business conflicts. But a chorus of media observers and critics had other ideas.

Rather than applaud the Times for its report, lots of commentators wondered why the newspaper waited until after the election to wave large red flags about Trump’s obvious conflicts, especially when the Times — and so much of the campaign press — spent an extraordinary amount of energy obsessing over potential conflicts of interest, and possible ethical lapses, supposedly surrounding Hillary Clinton.

Looking back, there certainly seems to be a perception that the political press didn’t really care about Trump’s looming, impossible-to-miss conflicts or the bad “optics” they might produce. And it appears that the press was overly infatuated with conflict questions about Clinton — questions today that seem quaint compared to Trump’s far-flung business dealings, which represent a possible gateway to corruption.

That’s not to say the topic wasn’t addressed or that some journalists didn’t tackle it in real time during the campaign season. Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek produced a helpful deep dive back in September. And the business press was urgent and upfront in detailing the unprecedented nature of Trump’s looming problem. Bloomberg in June: “Conflicts of Interest? President Trump’s Would Be Amazing.”

But in general, the political press seemed less engaged with this issue and appeared reluctant to tag the obvious Trump storyline as a campaign priority. There didn’t seem to be an institutional commitment to pursuing and documenting that storyline, even though the potential problems for Trump were obvious and the story might have disqualified him.

Even today, the story isn’t being treated with the urgency it deserves. Yes, more new organizations are tepidly acknowledging the colossal conflicts and looming inside deals, but so much of the coverage still lacks resolve. Question for journalists: If Clinton arrived at the White House with open and boundless business conflicts, how would you cover that story? What kind of outraged, lecturing tone would you take? Now treat the Trump story the same way.

Newsrooms need to learn from their lackluster campaign coverage and treat the unfolding Trump controversy as a permanent beat inside newsrooms for the next four years. It certainly demands that kind of attention and focus.

Note that aside from the Times’ big Sunday Trump conflict piece, the newspaper also published detailed articles on the topic November 21 and 14, and before the election on November 5. But aside from a few exceptions, in the months prior to Election Day, when voters were assessing the candidates, the intense focus on Trump’s conflicts just wasn’t there. (As Media Matters reported, the same trend played out on network newscasts, which devoted scant time to Trump’s conflicts of interest before the election only to ramp up coverage after Trump’s victory.)

Where was there lots of media campaign interest? (And also lots of bad journalism?) Trying to detail Clinton’s possible conflicts, a storyline forever deemed by the press to be a Very Big Deal.

Recall that the Times and The Washington Post considered potential Clinton conflicts stemming from the family charity to be so pressing that both newspapers entered into unusual exclusive editorial agreements with Peter Schweizer, the partisan Republican author who wrote the Breitbart-backed book Clinton Cash. (The Times also breathlessly hyped the book in its news pages.)

And that was 18 months before Election Day. The topic remained a media priority throughout the campaign.

Clinton Cash, a hodgepodge of innuendo and connect-the-dot allegations, was riddled with errorsU.S. News & World Report described the book as a “somewhat problematic” look at the Clintons’ financial dealings, while Time noted that one of the book’s central claims was “based on little evidence.”

Yet Clinton’s alleged conflicts were considered to be so important inside newsrooms — and it was deemed so crucial for the Beltway press to suss out every conceivable detail — that the Times and the Post were willing to make dubious alliances with GOP operatives.

Needless to say, no such partisan unions were formed to report out Trump’s massive business conflicts. Indeed, most news consumers would be hard-pressed to suggest Trump’s obvious business conflicts constituted a centerpiece of his campaign coverage for the previous 18 months.

Meanwhile, recall that lots of media elites demanded Clinton take action before the election in order to eliminate the supposed conflicts surrounding the Clinton Foundation. During August and September, that topic created yet another wave of frenzied Clinton coverage, fueled by the media’s “optics” obsession.

At the time, NBC’s Chuck Todd perfectly summed up the media’s weird pursuit when he announced, “Let’s be clear, this is all innuendo at this point. No pay for play has been proven. No smoking gun has been found.” Todd then quickly added, “But like many of these Clinton scandals, it looks bad.”

From NPR:

There’s no question the optics are bad for Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. But no proof has emerged that any official favors — regulations, government contracts, international deals — were curried in exchange for donations or pledges.

And from Time:

If she didn’t do anything wrong, why won’t she defend herself? By avoiding taking responsibility, Clinton only exacerbates the perception she is dishonest and untrustworthy, the primary hurdle on her path to the White House. Optics matter when the issue is transparency.

According to the media mantra, Clinton’s possible big-money conflicts looked really, really bad. Reporters hammered the theme for weeks and months, while only occasionally glancing over in the direction of Trump’s concrete conflicts.

Today, coverage of Trump’s conflicts and self-dealing has belatedly arrived. But it often comes with an odd sense of delayed wonder, as if journalists are just now realizing the epic size of the pay-for-play problem at hand for the country, while still hedging their bets.

For instance, the headline for the Post’s November 25 article announced, “Trump’s Presidency, Overseas Business Deals And Relations With Foreign Governments Could All Become Intertwined.”

Could? The president-elect’s business dealing could be a conflict for U.S. foreign policy? That Post framing seems to dramatically underplay what’s currently unfolding. As the Post itself has reported, “Trump has done little to set boundaries between his personal and official business since winning the presidency.”

Indeed, Trump’s refusal to divest himself from a sprawling array of business interests is certain to create an ethical morass that even Republican attorneys insist will produce endless, possibly debilitating, conflicts for Trump.

The media mostly missed this pressing story once during the campaign. They can’t afford to overlook it a second time.

IMAGE: U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump gestures at a press conference held during a visit to his Scottish golf course at Turnberry in Scotland, August 1, 2015. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

Did The Trump Campaign Break Election Law With ‘Staff Writer’ Meredith McIver?

Did The Trump Campaign Break Election Law With ‘Staff Writer’ Meredith McIver?

When self-described “in-house staff writer at the Trump Organization” Meredith McIver released a statement claiming responsibility for including Michelle Obama’s language in Melania Trump’s RNC speech, she did so on “The Trump Organization” letterhead.

It’s a small point, but it matters a lot in the world of election law: Candidates must document services provided by the employees of their own private businesses, or for any services which would otherwise have been reimbursed instead of volunteered. That’s why the second-largest recipient of Trump campaign money is Tag Air, the Trump-owned operator of Trump’s private jet, and why Hope Hicks, who is employed by The Trump Organization, is paid with a paycheck from the Trump campaign: It’s the law.

But a comprehensive search through all of Trump’s campaign expenditures (available here) and in-kind donations to the campaign (here) found no evidence of campaign payments to McIver, implying that the Trump campaign could be illegally accepting an in-kind donation from one of Trump’s businesses.

Here’s the official word from the FEC’s “volunteer activity” frequently asked questions page:

An individual may volunteer his or her personal services to a campaign without making a contribution as long as the individual is not compensated by anyone else.  11 CFR 100.74. For example, if an individual helps organize a voter drive or offers his or her particular skills to a campaign, neither of those activities will result in a contribution, as long as the individual is not compensated.  If the individual is compensated for his or her services, the activity is no longer considered volunteer activity and the payments, if made by someone other than the campaign itself, result in an in-kind contribution from that person, which must be reported by the campaign.  11 CFR 100.54.

If McIver is employed by Trump and is not volunteering her services, this could well be a breach of election law.

June’s FEC filing will be released today, July 20. If McIver’s name is listed as a campaign expenditure there, this story will certainly be updated to reflect that.