Conflict Of Interest? Moi?

Honestly, it's far too big a chore to try to keep on top of Trump's multitudinous and obvious conflicts of interest. Remember that his campaign vilified Hillary for months, insisting that she had all sorts of nefarious contacts with the Clinton Foundation. Well, the Clinton Foundation is a registered charity, and as such, its sources of income and its expenditures must be completely transparent -- they have to account for every penny that comes in and goes out. That's because charities are tax-exempt, so they are required to disclose how they obtain and how they spend their money in order to prove that their tax exemption is justified.

Donald Trump -- aside from the tiny, laughable, crooked Trump Foundation -- has no such requirement for the Trump Organization. There are no shareholders, and therefore no fiduciary responsibilities open to investigation, no shareholders' meetings where financial statements are divulged. He can't legally be forced to disclose information about his private holdings -- and therefore he doesn't, and won't. Easy prediction: We will NEVER see Trump's tax returns. First he said he would release them after completion of an audit; lately he's been saying he'll disclose them "at an appropriate time." That appropriate time will come when Satan is practicing his double axels on Hell's frozen surface and pigs are nesting in the trees.

A few of the most obvious conflicts, just in the first week or so after his victory in the election:

1. He is conducting meetings in secret at the Trump Tower in Manhattan and at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, away from the prying eyes of the American press corps. That's why we learn about some of his doings from the foreign press. For instance, there were no pictures in American media of Trump's meeting with Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan. When pictures were published in the Japanese press, they showed Trump and Abe with Ivanka and Donald Jr.; it had not been previously known the kids were in the meeting. Articles were published in the Indian press showing pictures of Trump meeting with a trio of his Indian business partners; until that time, Americans had been unaware of such a meeting. He received a phone call from Mauricio Macri, president of Argentina. According to the Argentine press, Trump accepted Macri's congratulations and asked him to help with a building project Trump has going in Buenos Aires that is running into permit problems (a spokesman for Macri responded to the report that it was untrue). But Americans learned this from the foreign press; it had been unknown here.

2. The Trump family appeared behind The Donald on his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl; Ivanka was sporting a very attractive bracelet. Just afterwards, her company advertised that for only $10,800, you, too, can be the proud owner of the bracelet worn by Ivanka on 60 Minutes. (The advertisement was taken down after the news hit the press; an "overeager" marketing employee was blamed.)

3. Trump has extensive business interests in the Philippines; his flagship venture is a 57-story Trump Tower under construction in Manila. In a shrewd business move, Trump conducts his business in the Philippines with a Filipino partner, Jose E.B. Antonio, chairman of Century Properties Group. Just before the election, Antonio was appointed as an envoy to Washington for trade, investment and economic affairs. Nice!

4. Foreign supplicants are staying at Trump's new hotel, just a couple of blocks from the White House. One such visitor said something like, "If you're going to meet the president, it's nice to be able to break the ice with a comment like 'I love your hotel!'"

Digby at Hullabaloo reports:

The Trump brand is clearly worth a lot more money than it was worth two weeks ago. It’s now the “President of the United States” brand, and Trump and his family are poised to cash in handsomely along with their foreign partners. There are no laws against a president running his international business from the Oval Office, mainly because nobody ever thought a president would so blatantly use the office for personal gain.

And what are Trump's business interests in Russia? Is he indebted to Putin's friends, large Russian banks? We may never find out.

I recently saw a law professor with a specialty in ethics on All In With Chris Hayes make an interesting suggestion: Suppose FDR, during the 1930s, had had extensive and valuable holdings in Germany? Would that perhaps have affected his decisions regarding U.S. policy toward Hitler and the Nazi regime? There were indeed powerful U.S. business interests with extensive holdings in Nazi Germany -- Ford, IBM, Coca-Cola, MGM, Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, Brown Brothers Harriman (a financial services firm, subsidiary of the German conglomerate Thyssen, with Prescott Bush on the board of directors), Woolworth, Alcoa, and GM. But that's different from FDR having a substantial personal stake.

On the subject of conflict interest, Trump has said:

“The law’s totally on my side” when it comes to questions about conflict of interest and ethics laws. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest."