Gingrich Says Traditional Laws Don't Apply To Trump

Newt Gingrich has a brilliant idea for solving the conflict of interest and nepotism problems that Trump’s family poses. According to Gingrich, “In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon. It is a totally open power, and he could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.’ Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

Sure, if Trump wants to appoint Ivanka and Jared as advisers or roving “business ambassadors” so they can go out on the taxpayer’s dime and round up business for the Trump organization, why should that bother anyone. After all, Trump is so rich and has so many business interests that the rules for everyone else shouldn’t apply.

You may think that’s sarcasm, but it is exactly what Newt thinks. Although he acknowledged Trump’s massive conflicts of interests, he said that Trump’s great wealth meant that “traditional rules don’t apply…You can’t say that Trump Tower is not the Trump Tower or that Trump Hotel is not the Trump Hotel, and you can’t say that the kids who run it aren’t his children. These are facts and they’re obvious.” Indeed they are. Which is why we have these anti-nepotism laws in the first place and also why we have conflict of interest laws and traditionally forced Presidents to divest themselves from the business when, as President, they supposedly start working for the American people and not themselves. Gingrich’s answer to Trump’s conflicts of interests is to set up committee to warn Trump when he might be getting “too close to the edge”. Close to the edge of what, Gingrich doesn’t say. But, considering that Trump and his family will technically be in violation of the Emoluments Clause and the STOCK Act on day one of his presidency, I would say close to the edge would be around January 18th. And I wonder how this “committee” would even know what the Trump Organization is doing, considering much of what we’ve learned about its activities overseas after his election has come from the foreign press rather than the Trump Organization itself.

This attitude that it is OK to have more than one master has become fashionable among the financial elite these days. It is prevalent in the boardrooms of Wall Street where executives at on large bank often sit on the board of another large bank. This is one method of making sure that the oligopoly that dominates the financial industry doesn’t compete too heavily with each other. Trump is just taking that approach to the Trump Organization and the Presidency. There’s really no conflict because he will always be working for the best interests of both. He also has a bridge to sell you.

As Richard Painter, George W Bush’s ethics lawyer and a constant critic of Trump’s conflicts of interests, says, “There is no billionaire exception in the Constitution of the United States…The pardon power can not be used by the president to pardon himself, or to cause other members of his administration to engage in illegal conduct or unconstitutional conduct and then simply use the pardon power in that way. If the pardon power allows that, the pardon power allows the president to become a dictator.” Painter doesn’t seem to understand those are just “traditional rules” that shouldn’t apply to Trump. Welcome to the GOP version of a democracy.