Ethics chief slams Trump Organisation handover plan as ‘wholly inadequate’

Painter said the office needs to make sure no financial conflicts emerge in the new administration, which he called a “billionaire’s club”.

“The Trump brand is key to the value of the Trump organization’s assets”, Dillon said.

It’s no wonder the director of the Office of Government Ethics finds the Trump plan unacceptable and suggests it would open the president to “suspicions of corruption”. Mitt Romney, the GOP nominee in 2012 who would have been the only president in shouting distance of Trump’s financial league, was prepared to do the same. “President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built”, Dillon said.

Shaub on Wednesday criticized Trump’s announcement laying out how he planned to structure his business holdings before being sworn in as president ‎on January 20.

“The idea of setting up a trust to hold his operating businesses adds nothing to the equation”, he added. Over the past several weeks, Shaub and the O.G.E. have routinely censured Trump for not divesting completely and placing his assets in a blind trust, at one point using the O.G.E.’s official Twitter account to jokingly congratulate him for divesting.

This week, Shaub issued a scathing review of Trump’s plan to turn over control of his business to his sons.

What’s more, they say people could try to curry favor with the president by striking sweetheart deals with the family business. Those tweets were later revealed to have been directed by Shaub.

“My two sons, Don and Eric, will be running the company”, Trump said.

Trump attorney Sheri Dillon clearly disagrees.

“I’m very confident that the president-elect and his extraordinarily talented family are going to work with the best legal minds in this country and create the proper separation from their business enterprise during his duties as president of the United States”, Pence said. Justice Scalia warned us that there would be consequences if a President ever failed to adhere to the same standards that apply to lower level officials. The more common alternatives to such a setup would be a blind trust or divestiture, both of which Dillon dismissed as impractical. We would have told them that this arrangement fails to meet the statutory requirements.

‘Unfortunately, ‘ Shaub said, ‘his current plan can not achieve that goal’. She’s got her own complex business interests.

Shaub noted that this was not about imposing some kind of penalty on the president-elect. Contrary to the president-elect’s assertions, the public does care about Trump disclosing his tax returns and potentially profiting from the presidency.

Mr Shaub said that Mr Trump should place all of his assets in a blind trust instead to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the White House, echoing arguments that ethics lawyers have made in recent weeks.”This is not a blind trust”, Mr Shaub said.

For example, President Jimmy Carter sold his Georgia peanut farm when he took office. He pointed out that having a president who voluntarily complies with the rules would set a positive tone and provide the OGE with an ally in enforcing ethics rules throughout the executive branch. Tone from the top matters. “He’s going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices”.