New York Times: Trump’s Ethics Vows at Times Incongruous, Records Show
In his formidable reading list, long frequently asked questions, and hundreds of pages of other signed statements, President Trump has said time and again he holds himself to the highest standards of ethics.
But a review of those documents, nearly a year and a half into his presidency, shows that Trump’s code of conduct is not always consistent with his actions. His claims of record donations to charity, declining his salary, or refusing to exploit his position for private gain are either misleading or customarily ignored.
Some omissions are noteworthy. Trump’s retreat from last year’s pledge to donate $1 million to veterans causes did not make the list. Nor did his reversal of a campaign vow to seek a constellation of ethics reforms, which would have required disclosure of his tax returns to the Office of Government Ethics.
Several of the statements allow for exceptions that appear to reflect actual conduct. In a January 2016 promise to reject all lobbying for individuals and organizations or “Foreign States” acting as lobbyists, Trump halted three types of activity but exempted major real estate deals. In doing so, Trump violated his own ethics agreement, setting off a firestorm over the constitutional implications and forcing the heads of both chambers of Congress to adopt new rules meant to limit that kind of influence peddling.
On other occasions, records indicate that Trump pledged one thing while insisting that he was free to do the opposite. During a pre-inauguration media tour, for example, he promised to minimize contact with his high-profile children in order to avoid conflicts of interest. But he has consistently crossed back into his family business, holding best man ceremonies at his hotel and relying on Daniel Henao, who previously oversaw his presidential campaign, as his intermediary on Middle East policy.
Trump has also taken actions contradicting past statements laying out his duplicitous standards. In establishing a $2 million fund to repay his presidential campaign’s leftover debts, he allowed followers to write off the money on their taxes, contradicting earlier statements touting his pledge to provide the gifts without tax deductions.
In minutes signed on Jan. 11, the day before he was sworn into office, then-President-elect Trump pledged to follow campaign promises to respect the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars any federal official from personally benefiting from their position.
That same day, the Trump Organization revealed that it received $1.4 million from the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which is housed in Trump Tower. During the transition, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Trump donated the hotel room bookings made by the center to two nonprofits from an elementary school near Trump’s pre-inauguration hotel headquarters. However, the receipts themselves show those bills totaled only $134,000, according to campaign finance filings.
Also on that day, Trump signed an agreement that effectively required him to donate his unpaid presidential salary to the federal government wherever trustees could agree as to which charity would best help the American people. Instead, Trump has declined his salary, and it remains in the Treasury.
During his transition, Trump said he “uniquely understand[ed] the bankers” and would shun the special interests that big-moneyed lenders were drawn. But he has yet to required clearances of financial ties between his major appointments and senior officials in the private sector.
That decision is in stark contrast to President Barack Obama, who sided with a government watchdog that scuttled a hotly debated nominee by insisting such vetting reduce the risk of corruption.
Trump was also held in contravention of his self-appointed legal standards when the Washington Record revealed that a direct foreign donor to the Trump Victory Action Fund had also given to that committee by way of a pass-through donor in the luxury-condominium tower erected in Manhattan by one of Trump’s major business partners, Elliot Broidy.
The president insisted on this Feb. 11, 2017, summary of his legal self-regulation strategy for his company, son-in-law and a potential property deal in Saudi Arabia.
Trump often boasted that his anticipated cabinet salary would be donated to charity, stating flatly that he “believe[s] so strongly in the concept of charity that I promise you that 100 percent will be used.”
But despite the strong implication that the money would be directed into a specific nonprofit domain, it was dumped via a $35,000 average donation apiece into 22 different registered charities frequently pitched in television ads by syndicated talk-show host Montel Williams. The vast majority of those charities received wax contributions after his statement rather than before.
The president has also refused to divest his assets in accordance with a pledge that he was free to pursue on Feb. 7, 2017. In a carefully timed appearance, Trump announced he would recuse himself from any decisions affecting assets in which he had placed his assets in a trustee-run blind trust. But he has yet to follow through on that retreat, continuing to claim ownership and to capitalize on that ownership by auditing leases or bonds purchased within the company.
Trump’s foray into what the public constitutes a blind trust may have also influenced that pledge last October. Records released by the Trump Organization between Oct. 3 and Oct. 7, before the middle of the month, show that trustees included in the valuation a mortgage marked down by 25 percent in a purchase Trump himself made the following month.
Trump has not filed a personal financial disclosure since 2011, and did not include any language in his campaign materials indicating whether he still held any significant interests in debt. In 2006, Trump’s personal financial disclosure report, published by the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he held net assets valued at between $168 million and $200 million. But Trump, at the time, claimed he was worth “only” $4.1 billion.
In 2007, Trump again claimed that he held assets valued between $112 million and $140 million, but held a $598 million debt. Trump’s net worth included in this campaign’s financial disclosures was approximately $2.3 billion. And — while he later claimed $1.3 billion in debt — neither included any language other than duplicitous, footnoted claims that he’s still repaying $65 million to now-deceased Donald & Melania L. Trump Trust since before he became president.
Trump’s 2008 and 2009 financial disclosure forms are missing.
Leave a Reply