Trump's Con Continues

Trump’s Conflicts of Interest

When Private Deals Ignore Public Duty

We expect our elected officials will attend to their public duties not burdened with private obligations or interests that might interfere with the public’s best interests. We h expect our elected officials’ to disclose their private economic interests so we know that private concerns are not driving public decisions.

Many conservatives railed against Clinton’s private speeches to Wall Street firms, demanding transcripts so they would know what promises or assurances she might have made to secure the support those on the Street had provided. Some on the left wanted access to those same transcripts to be assured that her campaign promises to clean up Wall Street excesses were not contradicted in those private discussions.

Those same conservatives also complained loudly that large foreign and domestic donations to the Clinton Foundation bought access to government officials as part of the condemned “pay to play” politics that put private interests before the public’s best interests.

With Trump’s election, the conservative voices that condemned potential and real governmental conflicts of interest have gone strangely silent. They now implore us to rewrite the rules and forget the expectations so “change” can come to the dreaded Washington.

Let us not forget that the president-elect promised us his tax returns after he was elected. Have we seen them?

Would you like to know the foreign banks and governments to which Trump owes large sums of money as he writes off the interest he pays on their business loans? Would you like to know just how much of his claimed charitable contributions he wrote off against his income? Would you like to know where the Trump Foundation got its money and where it spent those donations? Would you like to know where all of his holdings are around the globe so we can measure his decisions involving the governments that host them? Would you like to know how much he paid in federal and state taxes, if any, for the last ten years?

These very telling connections have been revealed by every candidate for president in modern history long before the elections, except one, Donald Trump.

We know that Trump’s business is very large and generates significant income to him and his family. No president in modern history has come to the office with such far-flung economic interests and investments.

All of those who have preceded the president-elect have either sold off their business interests and investments and placed the resulting cash into government bonds or placed their assets in a “blind trust” administered by someone with no connections to or communication with the president. This prevents the president from making decisions, both domestic and foreign, which might have an impact upon his business holdings. This puts the public interest first, where it belongs.

Trump has declined to follow these traditions. He first claimed that a president cannot have any conflicts of interest just because he is the president. Then he said he would create a “blind trust” with his sons at the helm that would make no “deals” while he was in office. That did not fly far either, especially when they sat in on meetings between their father and business leaders.

Trump was scheduled to hold a press conference on December 15, 2016, to tell us how he would approach the obvious and massive conflicts he faces between his private business and investment empire and his public trust obligations. It was cancelled and put off to “sometime in January” so he and his lawyers can “figure it out.”

Clearly, the team did not want to face the firestorm before the Electoral College votes to make Trump the next president this coming Monday. After all he remains the Executive Producer of Celebrity Apprentice and that distraction will have to suffice.

Looming on the horizon are still other conflicts between the Trump Empire’s interests and the public’s trust. He remains the owner of several large facilities that lease space to federal government offices under leases that prohibit any government official from profiting from the leases. He owns stock in the company building the Dakota Access Pipe Line and already voiced approval of the line that has been the target of strong opposition to its operations by Native Tribes and their allies. Not to worry. His pick for Energy Secretary, former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, is a paid member of the DAPL Board of Directors. He’ll fix it. Trump’s business dealings with Russia are eclipsed only by those of the Exxon Oil CEO who he tapped to be the next Secretary of State amid a consensus finding by the government’s own intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the cyber hacking of the election that swept Trump to power.

Trump loyalists, let me introduce you to the most conflicted President-elect this county has ever elected.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and vice-chair of the Democratic Party of Washington County.