The Atlantic

Trump's Interests vs. America's, Dominican Republic Edition

Despite a promise to stop pursuing foreign deals, the Trump Organization is revisiting a previously abandoned licensing agreement.
Source: Peter Ryan

The Trump Organization’s January 11 pledge that it would no longer be pursuing new deals in foreign countries is looking increasingly toothless. Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, The Guardian reported that the president’s business would be moving forward with a planned expansion of its golf course in Aberdeen. Now, the Associated Press has reported that the company is working on a licensing deal in the Dominican Republic.

As was true with the Aberdeen plans, the Trump Organization has provided a narrow justification under which it argues that the news does not violate its promise. Technically, it argues, the deal is not new: The Trump Organization has had a contract with Ricardo and Fernando Hazoury, the brothers who own the Cap Cana Resort in the Dominican Republic, since 2007. But the financial crisis and disagreements between the Trump family and the Hazoury brothers, which climaxed with Eric Trump accusing the pair of “textbook fraud” in a 2012 lawsuit, had stalled the arrangement for nearly a decade, and the two parties haven’t written a new contract since the 2007 deal was struck. Even other real-estate developers have said that the resumption of the relationship between the Trumps and Hazourys caught them by surprise. For their part, the Hazourys have said that the relationship with the Trumps “remains incredibly strong, especially with Eric, who has led this project since its conception.”

The development in the Dominican Republic epitomizes the way the Trump Organization seems intent to violate the spirit of their “no new foreign deals” pledge, and arguably even the letter. Asked about the Organization’s justification for the deal, Richard Painter, who served as the ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, noted that the company “can take the tiniest little past involvement in something and then extend it into an enormous new deal” and hasn’t presented a meaningful way “to distinguish between new business and old business.” Already, the Trump Organization has provided excuses for moving forward with two projects based on an interpretation of its own pledge that seems predicated on the idea that a deal can only be described as “new” if there had never been any relationship whatsoever between the Trump family and the property in question. As the company finds more explanations to broaden what initially seemed to be a clear-cut policy to reduce conflicts of interest—arguably, the only step in Trump’s plan that actually would have helped him do so—the pledge will likely become increasingly meaningless.

The Cap Cana story is yet another conflict of interest that only became public because of reporting from local media—and because of the nonchalance with which the Trump family handles the relationship between their business and the presidency. The first outlet to report on Eric’s trip was the Dominican newspaper Diario Libre, shortly after Cap Cana posted a picture of the Hazourys with Eric on its website. This follows stories like the president’s phone call with the president of Argentina and his company’s plans to expand into Taiwan, both of which were similarly broken by local newspapers before getting picked up by American press outlets. Further, like the president’s post-election meeting with business partners from India and Eric’s trip to Uruguay, the Trump family’s propensity for photo ops played a role: Even amid intensifying scrutiny of the Trump Organization’s actions, Eric seems unworried about having not only taken the trip but also taken pictures with his business partners.


The Background

President Donald Trump still has not taken the necessary steps to distance himself from his businesses while in office. In accordance with a plan that he and one of his lawyers, Sheri Dillon, laid out at a press conference on January 11, Trump has filed paperwork to remove himself from the day-to-day operation of his eponymous organization. However, numerous ethics experts have voiced strenuous objections to the plan, which they say does very little to resolve the issue: As long as Trump continues to profit from his business empire—which he does whether or not he is nominally in charge—they say, the possibility that outside actors will attempt to affect his policies by plumping up his pocketbook will remain very much in play.

This week, some of Trump’s critics moved forward with legal action. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump’s business holdings violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which makes it illegal for government officials to “accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” CREW’s bipartisan legal team includes, among others, Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, who served as ethics lawyers under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, respectively; Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University; and Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham University (and former congressional candidate) who is considered an authority on the Emoluments Clause. All have been vocally critical of Trump’s continued refusal to sell off his business, and are now taking their case to court to argue that several of Trump’s businesses present avenues by which foreign governments could seek to influence the president by, for example, booking stays at one of his hotels or renting space at one of his properties. Additionally, the lawsuit seeks to force Trump to reveal his tax returns, something every president has done since Gerald Ford but which Trump has refused to do, significantly limiting the public’s ability to understand the president’s finances. When asked about the lawsuit, Trump described it as “totally without merit.” Eisen was quick to respond on Twitter, offering to “debate Trump (or his chosen champion) on the merits of our case anytime,” making it clear that CREW intends to continue to pursue its case. (CREW has also filed a separate complaint to the General Services Administration arguing that Trump has violated the lease on his Washington, D.C. hotel, which states that “no … elected official of the Government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”)

Though CREW is the first group to bring a lawsuit against President Trump, it may soon have company. According to The New York Times, Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, has said that his organization is looking for a plaintiff to sue Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause, although with a different claim to legal standing: While CREW intends to demonstrate that the group itself has suffered financial harm because the need to focus on the Emoluments Clause has diverted its resources away from other worthy causes, the ACLU is hoping to find a hotel or bed-and-breakfast owner that can prove he or she has lost business to one of Trump’s hotels during his presidency.

CREW’s lawsuit is just the latest development in what promises to be a continuing saga regarding Trump’s many conflicts of interest that began almost as soon as he won the presidency. Along with his unprecedented wealth, Trump brings to the office unique and gravely concerning entanglements that, whether he recognizes their effects or not, threaten to undermine his decision-making as president. The plan Trump and Dillon announced on January 11 would do very little to resolve the conflicts: It places control of his assets in the hands of his two adult sons and a longtime associate of their father’s with what so far amounts to a pinky-swear assurance that, despite their proximity to the president, they will not discuss any aspect of the business with him. On top of that, the plan supposedly would terminate several of the Trump Organization’s pending deals and place a ban on new foreign deals, two conditions undermined by the announcement that the organization would be moving forward with expanding its golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Even before his most recent plan was laid out, Trump has attempted to deflect criticism by repeatedly asserting that the law barring executive-branch officials from maintaining financial holdings or business ties that overlap with their duties does not apply to the president or vice president. In this, he is correct; the law, passed in 1989, exempts the two chief executives from conflict-of-interest rules on the understanding that their purview is so broad that it would be impossible for them to completely disentangle themselves.

Regardless, legality does not imply propriety. Unless Trump acts to put actual distance between himself and his business ventures, these questions are likely to continue throughout his time in the Oval Office. On top of the aforementioned legal actions, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, has declared Trump’s efforts insufficient, remarking, “I don’t think divestiture is too high of a price to pay to be the president of the United States,” and a number of Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would force Trump to divest or face impeachment. Below is an attempt to catalogue the more clear-cut examples of conflicts of interest that have emerged so far. The most recent entries appear at the top:


President Donald Trump’s most iconic property is about to get a new tenant: the Department of Defense. , the

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