Trump Says Sons Will Take ‘Complete and Total Control’ of the Business

“The key element here is Mr. Trump’s willingness, day after day, year after year, to maintain a hands-off relationship with his sons in terms of the business”, MoneyWatch’s Larry Light explains. He said the interview would “help the committee understand how you perceive OGE’s role, among other things”.

Dillon said Trump’s decision to separate himself from the Trump Organization was made “voluntarily” and noted that under current US conflict of interest laws the president and vice president “are not required to separate themselves from their financial assets”. Contrary to the president-elect’s assertions, the public does care about Trump disclosing his tax returns and potentially profiting from the presidency.

“Your agency’s mission is to provide clear ethics guidance, not engage in public relations”.

“There is lots to look at there”, said Chaffetz, whether it is a conflict of interest within the Federal Bureau of Investigation or elsewhere or if there is a conflict of interest within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or if people were taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in a political account. Dillon said Trump would resign from all positions connected to his business interests and would put his holdings in a trust, which would be administered by his sons and a senior Trump Corporation official.

“The Democrats are highly critical of that but he had a duty to do it”, said Chaffetz.

Chaffetz’s threat to investigate Shaub and the OGE but not Trump now has Chaffetz under fire.

But “I don’t like the way that looks”, he said.

The letter sent Thursday follows one Chaffetz sent to Shaub in December 2015.

“The plan the President-elect has announced doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met”, Schaub said.

Shaub acknowledged that divesting himself from his business holdings “could be costly” for the president-elect, but said it was a necessary step.

Chaffetz’s letter didn’t mention Schaub’s public statements. A sell-off would have created additional conflicts, she said, while a blind trust would have been unrealistic for a real estate company with high-profile assets. “I wish he would have just voluntarily came in before the Trump involvement came up”.

At a press conference, Trump and his lawyer tossed out enough legal and financial terminology that “people who want to believe that he’s taking care of the problem can point to something”, said Larry Noble, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog group.

In a troubling sign of the times the powerful Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is going after the United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and its director, Walter Shaub. Trump has not committed to divesting, and the tweets raised eyebrows.

Although presidents are not subject to the same conflict of interest rules as other government employees, previous commanders-in-chief have placed their investments into a blind trust to prevent any question of corruption.

Unfortunately, Trump has achieved such an huge triumph while violating so many political and cultural norms that his instinct may be to reflexively dismiss any warnings about the ethical land mines ahead.