Trump's Leaving His Business Merely A Maneuver To Avoid Emoluments Clause

Donald Trump’s yuuuge announcement that he will be leaving his business got the requisite amount of positive press without providing any details of how he might actually do that. The best guess is that he will do what he said during the campaign and allow his children to run it. Of course, that will do nothing to prevent the massive conflicts of interest Trump will have as President because he already knows where all his current business interests are and he will be in constant contact with his children so that he will know whatever new investments come up. There is absolutely no way that he will ensure that his family will not be in control. What would Ivanka, Eric, Don Jr. do with themselves without Donald’s toy to play with. And Trump himself probably could not live knowing that his company would not be there for him whenever he exits the White House.

But what was more fascinating about Trump’s statement was that he clearly stated he was NOT interested in avoiding any conflicts of interest. Here is his tweeted statement in full: “I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses. Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!”

There are two important points to note in this statement. First, Trump claims that he is not bound by law from these conflicts of interest, saying he is “not mandated to do this under law”. He is only doing this out of the kindness of his apparently non-existent heart. In fact, many Constitutional scholars believe that the Emoluments Clause does prevent Trump from benefitting from his overseas investments. My guess is that whatever he does to “remove” himself from his business is meant to put enough distance between himself and foreign investors to get around the Emoluments Clause. In fact, he reinforces this impression when he states that he feels “it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest”. His own words belie the fact that he is not interested in making sure he does not have a conflict of interest. Rather, he is only interested in making it APPEAR that he does not have any conflict of interest. It will probably be just enough of an appearance to skirt the Emoluments Clause. As I keep on repeating, and as we saw with the Carrier deal, ignore what Trump says and focus on what he actually does.