The Trump conflicts of interest we can see are just the tip of the iceberg

[babylonsister]

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/29/13763836/trump-disclosure-conflict-of-interest


The Trump conflicts of interest we can see are just the tip of the iceberg
The true possibility of corruption is essentially unlimited.
Updated by Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Nov 29, 2016, 8:10am EST


For all the stunning revelations we’ve seen about Donald Trump and his global business interests since the election, the larger and more troubling issue is what we don’t know. A magisterial six-byline New York Times investigation found 20 countries around the world where Trump does business, and both the US and foreign governments are already talking about the intermingling of public and private interests.

But the most important line in the piece by far is an observation that’s not directly tied to any of that excellent reporting from around the world: “The true extent of Mr. Trump’s global financial entanglements is unclear, since he has refused to release his tax returns and has not made public a list of his lenders.”

To put it even more plainly: We have absolutely no idea what Trump owns, who his business partners are, who is paying him, or whom he owes money to. Trump’s main line of business in recent years has been licensing the Trump name to various developments, so there is a certain obvious connection between the various buildings in various cities named Trump Tower and the Trump Organization. In general, Trump likes to name things after himself, so as a rule, “if Trump is involved, the thing will be named Trump” has been a pretty good guideline. But obviously Trump is not actually legally required to name everything he’s involved with after himself.

And thanks to his failure to do any kind of meaningful financial transparency, the basic reality is we’re not really sure what he owns and we won’t be sure how his family’s investment portfolio shifts over the years. The truly scary thing, in other words, isn’t the conflicts of interest we can see. It’s all the conflicts — and, conceivably, bribes, insider trading, and other illicit activity — that we can’t see.

snip//

With all that water under the bridge, the only viable solution is for Trump to sell his companies and then put the financial proceeds into either a real blind trust or diversified index funds. Since Trump’s businesses are so bound up with the Trump name, it might be difficult for Trump to secure full value for his companies on the open market. Then again, the Trump brand’s value may have been enhanced by his electoral victory in ways that are separable from his possible corruption. Regardless, Trump has the good fortune to enjoy the political support of a posse of billionaires who could surely help him out with this.

It’s obviously very unlikely that Trump actually will do any of this. But Senate Republicans could almost certainly make him if they wanted to safeguard the long-term future of the country and their party. It makes no sense to confirm Trump’s appointees to agencies that are bound up with potential conflicts of interest until the Senate is given a clear vision from Trump of how he intends to clear up those conflicts — and the only way to the clear that I can see is full divestment. But until that happens, conflicts of interest don’t just exist in various visible Trump real estate projects — they exist everywhere, all around the world, in essentially all policy decisions, whether foreign or domestic.

[C_U_L8R]

1. What Trump's hiding can't be good.

Just imagine all the shady stuff he's not telling us.
This is going to be an excruciating few years... for him.

[kentuck]

2. We are fools if we let this guy take office knowing what we know.

Already.

[babylonsister]

3. I agree. There has

got to be a way to disqualify him after all this.