Trump Promised to Do Five Things to Separate Himself From His Business. Heres a Glaring Problem
With Each
Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/11/the_specific_problems_with_trump_s_plan_to_separate_himself_from_his_company.html
by Josh Voorhees
At long last, Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled his plan to separate himself from his business interests while president, something he previously promised would be oh-so simple to do at the same time he was finding reasons to delay taking any clear action on the matter. Based on what Trump shared today, the plan wasn’t worth the wait.
Standing on stage at Trump Tower, a building he owns, and joined by his adult children, two of whom he says will run the family business in his stead, the next president of the United States let his lawyer do most of the talking for him. For roughly 15 minutes, Sheri Dillon described a plan that she promised would “completely isolate” Trump from the management of his family business. But it won’t.
Even if we assume everyone involved will follow the plan Dillon laid out to the letter—a rather large assumption when it comes to Trump—the steps she described came nowhere close to addressing the very real concerns raised by good government types and ethics watchdogs, many of whom wasted no time making their frustrations clear following the press conference. “His elaborate-looking scheme constitutes at best a Potemkin trust, to coin a semi-Russian phrase,” Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe told Slate. “Mr. Trump’s ill-advised course will precipitate scandal and corruption,” Norm Eisen, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the Obama White House, told the Atlantic. “Donald Trump’s announcement today is a classic bait and switch,” added David Donnelly, head of the money-in-politics watchdog Every Voice.
My colleagues Jim Newell and Jamelle Bouie have offered their own unflattering assessments of Trump’s plan, but the specifics are worth a closer look. Trump’s plan can be broken down into five separate parts. Let’s take them in order.
Trump will pass control of his business to his sons.
The promise: Trump will turn over management of the Trump Organization to his two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and a long-time company executive, Allen Weisselberg. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, will likewise have no further involvement in the company now that she’s moving to Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jared Kushner, who will serve as a senior adviser to the president.
snip - another long read but worth it.