NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A public document filed by a company that just hired President Donald Trump\u2019s two oldest sons as advisers included a sentence early Monday that said it hoped to benefit from grants and other incentives from the federal government, which their father happens to lead.<\/p>\n
But when The Associated Press asked the Trump family business about the apparent conflict of interest, the document was revised and the line taken out.<\/p>\n
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are getting \u201cfounder shares\u201d worth millions of dollars in New America Acquisition 1 Corp., a company with no operating business that hopes to fill that hole by purchasing an American company that can play \u201ca meaningful role in revitalizing domestic manufacturing,\u201d according to the filing. The president has geared his trade policy toward boosting manufacturing in the U.S.<\/p>\n
The original version of the securities filing said the target company should be \u201cwell positioned\u201d to tap federal or state government incentives. That reference was taken out of the revised version.<\/p>\n
The Trump Organization didn\u2019t reply to a question about whether New America still planned to benefit from government programs or why the line was cut. But the outside law firm Paul Hastings that helped prepare the document sent an email to AP saying it was \u201cmistake\u201d made by \u201cscriveners,\u201d an old term for transcribers of legal papers.<\/p>\n
Kathleen Clark, an expert in government ethics, said any excuses are too late because the Trumps had already tipped their hand. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey just deleted the language. They haven\u2019t committed not to do what they said earlier today they were planning to do,\u201d said the Washington University law professor and Trump critic. \u201cIt\u2019s an attempt to exploit public office for private profit.\u201d<\/p>\n
New America is what\u2019s know as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It\u2019s a publicly traded company that exists solely to use its funds to acquire another company and take the target public. <\/p>\n
New America plans to raise money by selling new stock on the New York Stock Exchange at $10 a share. That will hand the two Trump sons a potential total of $50 million in paper wealth the moment the stock begins trading on the first day. The company hopes to sell enough shares to raise $300 million, which it then plans to use buying a yet unidentified manufacturer. <\/p>\n
A press release issued by New America saying it was focused on \u201cAmerican values and priorities.\u201d It made no mention of the aim to get government incentives. <\/p>\n
The filing to New America\u2019s potential new investors to the Securities and Exchange Commission was explicit about what it was looking for in a target company. It said, among other things, it wanted a company that can ride \u201cpublic policy tailwinds\u201d by benefiting from federal or state \u201cgrants, tax credits, government contracts or preferential procurement programs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A public document filed by a company that just hired President Donald Trump\u2019s two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2724,28,44295,3654,12,14004,793,787,565,44296,14007,44294,111,18907,795],"class_list":{"0":"post-58936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-associated-press","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-business-ownership","11":"tag-corporate-management","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-eric-trump","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-programs","16":"tag-jr","17":"tag-kathleen-clark","18":"tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","19":"tag-paul-hastings","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-subsidies","22":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}