Donald Trump raises prospect of keeping ties to his firms

The Wall Street Journal reports: Donald Trump indicated Tuesday he was unlikely to disentangle himself from his business empire as fully as he previously suggested, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest while president.

Mr. Trump and his representatives said during the campaign he would have nothing to do with his businesses if he became president, promising a “total and complete separation.”

But since the election, Mr. Trump has met with foreign business partners and involved daughter Ivanka Trump in such discussions, even though he has said his children will run his companies during the presidency as a way to separate their operations from the White House.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump told the New York Times that “the law’s totally on my side” and that “the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon accepted $376,000 in pay over four years for working 30 hours a week at a tiny tax-exempt charity in Tallahassee while also serving as the hands-on executive chairman of Breitbart News Network.

During the same four-year period, the charity paid about $1.3 million in salaries to two other journalists who said they put in 40 hours a week there while also working for the politically conservative news outlet, according to publicly available documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The salary payments are one part of a close relationship between the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, a conservative investigative research organization, and for-profit Breitbart News. [Continue reading…]

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