Trump and Staff’s Financial Holdings Create Unprecedented Ethics Concerns

FEATURING DEREK KRAVITZ – If you thought Donald Trump would take a bit of a break from his business of making money while President of a country of 300 plus million people, think again. There are dozens of new ventures in the works under the umbrella of Trump’s businesses, some of which don’t bear his name brand.

Trump has simply claimed that there are no ethical and financial conflicts between running a country and running such a major business because he has put his holdings in a so-called blind trust. But the President recently made changes to the trust to allow him to withdraw funds whenever he wanted.

It’s not just Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and many of his own cabinet members also face ethics concerns and possible conflicts of interests with their businesses. Indeed the Trump administration may be the wealthiest and most enmeshed in corporate America that we have ever seen.

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Derek Kravitz, research editor at ProPublica, former reporter and editor for the Greater New York section of The Wall Street Journal; and national economics writer for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C.