his administration guts the primary regulator of the<\/a> industry.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is an unprecedented level of conflict of interest and what appears to be some corruption,\u201d said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of policy and government at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government watchdog.<\/p>\n
He said Mr. Trump in his second term had appeared to fully internalize that he is exempt from civil and criminal conflict of interest laws that would otherwise require a senior federal official to sell holdings in companies that might benefit from his or her actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just ethically odious,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The White House has repeatedly dismissed questions of conflicts, maintaining that Mr. Trump\u2019s two older sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., run the business operations.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump, too, brushed aside the news of his financial disclosure filing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI purposely, I never speak to any of the people that run the money,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday morning before boarding the luxury plane donated by Qatar that now serves as Air Force One. \u201cYou know why I\u2019m profiting? Because the stock market is going up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, Mr. Trump has declined to make use of a traditional ethical guardrail: putting his assets in a blind trust. That means that he could potentially know what stocks he owns, and influence their performance with policy announcements or contracts even if he cannot direct how or when they are traded.<\/p>\n
The stock market\u2019s movements also do not explain the bulk of his financial haul in 2025, including when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family\u2019s main crypto company.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is an extraordinary conflict of interest unfolding in plain sight,\u201d said Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., an anti-corruption group.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s regrets over limiting his power in his first term have appeared to motivate other actions in his return to the White House. Mr. Trump has told advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing Republican veterans who went on to criticize him after leaving his administration. He has now installed loyalists throughout the federal government.<\/p>\n
He has put election deniers in key positions in the administration as he continues to express grievances about the integrity of the 2020 election. He has pushed out independent watchdogs, amassed executive power and shown little hesitation to push the limits in ways that were taboo in his first term.<\/p>\n
And Mr. Trump and his family in his second term have only doubled down when it comes to business ventures that are profiting from his administration\u2019s actions. Donald Trump Jr. has also expressed similar sentiment to his father, saying that his family got no credit for its restraint in Mr. Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
That includes legislation that Mr. Trump signed last July to promote a form of cryptocurrency called stablecoin, four months after his family-backed firm introduced its own stablecoin.<\/p>\n
With his two sons standing just feet behind him on Wednesday, Mr. Trump appeared unconcerned when asked about criticism that he was profiting from his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all profiting,\u201d Mr. Trump said as he once again spotlighted the stock market. \u201cI\u2019m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash and I give it to institutions. I don\u2019t know if they know what they\u2019re doing or not, but they buy a vast array of things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump returned to the White House with an epiphany about mixing business and politics during his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24433,1452,82791,104977,66379,9,11,10,1707,11770,17076,9234,30483,1069,1876,33437],"class_list":["post-284397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-conflicts-of-interest","tag-donald-j","tag-donald-j-jr","tag-eric-f-1984","tag-nepotism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-polls-and-public-opinion","tag-presidential-election-of-2024","tag-presidential-power-us","tag-presidents-and-presidency-us","tag-regulation-and-deregulation-of-industry","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-virtual-currency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}