Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Donald Trump shakes hands with supporters after speaking at an Oct. 3, 2015, campaign event in Franklin, Tenn.(Photo: Mark Zaleski, AP)
WASHINGTON —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>If voters decide to hire billionaire Donald Trump as their president in 2016, they couldn’t actually fire him from the job he now holds.
Federal law doesn’t explicitly<span style="color: Red;">*</span>prohibit President Trump from continuing to run the sprawling<span style="color: Red;">*</span>real-estate and brand-marketing empire that is the Trump Organization, federal ethics experts say. And the conflict-of-interest rules that bar Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking executive branch officials from overseeing matters that boost their personal bottom lines don’t apply to the president.
“The president holds a constitutional office, and it’s very difficult constitutionally to restrict the president’s activities,” said Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer who specializes in ethics and election laws. “Were he to be elected, it would be an interesting test case.”
So far, Trump has offered few specific details about how he would navigate potential conflicts of interest if he becomes the nation’s CEO. He told Golf Digest last month that his executives and children would take over the business should he win. Three of his children already are top executives with the company.
"My children have become very good at what they are doing," he said. "It’s a very big business, but they will be able to run it. And I think they’d run it very well."
The GOP front-runner’s use of business assets in his campaign already has raised questions.
Last month, for instance, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, Alan Garten, sent a cease-and-desist letter on company stationery that threatened the conservative Club for Growth with legal action over a political ad that slammed Trump’s positions on issues, such as taxes and health care. Earlier that month, Trump himself penned a note on corporate letterhead, urging CNN president Jeff Zucker to donate profits from the network’s Sept. 16 GOP debate to veterans’ groups.
Corporations cannot donate money nor in-kind services<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to a candidate for federal office under U.S. election law.
Garten could choose to volunteer his legal expertise to the campaign, said Richard Hasen, one of the nation’s leading election-law experts who teaches at the University of California-Irvine School of Law.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“But he certainly shouldn’t be using corporate resources and corporate letterhead.”
In an email, Garten described Trump’s missive to Zucker as a “personal letter.”
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Garten said<span style="color: Red;">*</span>his letter to the Club for Growth “was the result of what we believe were certain misleading and outright false statements which we were concerned could potentially cause damage to Mr. Trump’s reputation and business interests.”
It’s hard to argue that corporate assets should be used to defend a businessman engaged in a political fight, said Larry Noble, a top lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group and a former general counsel to the Federal Election Commission.
“The only reason this came up was because of his campaign,” Noble said of the controversy over the Club for Growth ad. “The attack wasn’t about anything his company did.”
There’s little chance Trump will face any legal difficulty as a consequence. The Federal Election Commission is<span style="color: Red;">*</span>locked in a 3-3 partisan deadlock on most issues and rarely takes any enforcement actions.
The debate, however, underscores the unique nature of Trump’s business and his candidacy. His wealth is closely tied to his name, which appears on everything from hotels and vodka to mattresses and golf courses, according to Trump’s<span style="color: Red;">*</span>financial disclosures with federal regulators.
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As president, Trump would have sway over the federal government, U.S. foreign policy and key parts of the economy. For instance, he<span style="color: Red;">*</span>would<span style="color: Red;">*</span>appoint members<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to the Federal Reserve Board, which sets interest rates that could affect mortgages on his real estate.
Wealthy figures certainly have ascended to the White House before. Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, for instance, are famous scions of vast fortunes.
Trump “stands out because he’s not just a businessman,” said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. <span style="color: Red;">*</span>“He’s the Flo Ziegfeld or the P.T. Barnum of politics. He’s an impresario. He’s genuinely unique.”
Other wealthy politicians have faced close scrutiny. In 2012, the rivals of multi-millionaire GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney questioned whether a blind trust run by his longtime financial adviser could be truly<span style="color: Red;">*</span>independent.
Decades earlier, Republican Nelson Rockefeller, whose family’s oil and banking empire made him one of the nation’s richest men, underwent an intense congressional grilling when he was appointed to serve as Gerald Ford’s vice president in 1974, following Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Rockefeller won confirmation, but the process lasted for months as lawmakers probed his assets, taxes and his earlier pattern of giving gifts and loans to public officials.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Rockefeller offered to place his holdings in a blind trust while he served in office, but lawmakers did not impose that condition, according to a summary of the 1974 deliberations from CQ Almanac.
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There’s still no requirement that the president or vice president stash assets in trusts they don't control, experts say, but many recent presidents have opted to either do so, sell assets that could pose a conflict with their official duties or put their money in broadly diverse investments, such as mutual funds.
Less than a year before taking steps to seek the presidency, for instance, George W. Bush sold his ownership stake in the MLB’s Texas Rangers. As president, his securities were held in a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>qualified diversified trust, one of two kinds of trusts used by top officeholders.
President Obama<span style="color: Red;">*</span>does not use a trust<span style="color: Red;">*</span>but has invested in diverse mutual funds, Treasury notes and bills. Despite the availability of lower interest rates, Obama<span style="color: Red;">*</span>also has steered clear of refinancing the 30-year<span style="color: Red;">*</span>mortgage he and his wife took out on their Chicago home in 2005 to avoid allegations of favoritism.
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“You wouldn’t have a president with a lot of defense company stocks,” said Richard Painter, who teaches law at the University of Minnesota and served in the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>White House as Bush’s chief ethics lawyer.
Although the executive<span style="color: Red;">*</span>branch ethics provisions<span style="color: Red;">*</span>don’t apply to the commander in chief, “every president I know has voluntarily sought to comply with the conflict-of-interest rules as best they can,” Painter said.
“I think anyone who wants to be president should make a commitment to the public as to what they will do with their holdings.”
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