Tag: conflict of interest

In a Beijing Ballroom, Kushner Family Sells $500,000 ‘Investor Visa’ to Wealthy Chinese

The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you.

That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors, renewing questions about the Kushner family’s business ties to China.

Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at the Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey real estate project to secure what’s known as an investor visa.

The EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, which allows foreign investors to invest in U.S. projects that create jobs and then apply to immigrate, has been used by both the Trump and Kushner family businesses.

But President Trump’s vow to crack down on immigration, as well as criticism from members of Congress, has led to questions about the future of a program known here as the “golden visa.”

The EB-5 has been extremely popular among rich Chinese who are eager to get their families — and their wealth — out of the country, though the fact that some move their money out illegally has made the program unpopular with the Chinese government, too.

In the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday, Chinese investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case the rules change. “Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker said.

The woman identified as “Jared’s sister” was believed to be Nicole Kushner, who is involved in the family business, not Dara Kushner, who generally stays out of the spotlight. But the woman’s face was not clearly visible from the back of the ballroom, where reporters were told to remain.

Saturday’s event in Beijing was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. The tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”

Qiaowai is working with Kushner to secure funding for Kushner 1, a real estate project in New Jersey. Promotional materials tout the buildings’ proximity to Manhattan and note that the project will create more than 6,000 jobs.

“This project has stable funding, creates sufficient jobs and guarantees the safety of investors’ money,” one description reads.

Although there was no visible reference to Trump, the materials noted the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status. Wang Yun, a Chinese investor who attended the event, said the Kushner family’s ties to Trump, via son-in-law Jared, were a part of the project’s appeal — but also a source of concern.

“Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s family, of course it is still affiliated,” Wang.

Wang reasoned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the presidency goes well but could be disastrous if it does not: “We heard that there are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”

Many of the people who attended the event declined to be interviewed, citing privacy concerns, or were blocked by organizers from speaking to the news media.

Though the event was publicly advertised in Beijing, the hosts were exceptionally anxious about the presence of reporters.

Journalists were initially seated at the back of the ballroom, but as the presentations got underway, a public-relations representative asked The Washington Post to leave, saying the presence of foreign reporters threatened the “stability” of the event.

At one point, organizers grabbed a reporter’s phone and backpack to try to force that person to leave. Later, as investors started leaving the ballroom, organizers physically surrounded attendees to stop them from giving interviews.

Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a public-relations representative, who declined to identify herself, said simply, “This is not the story we want.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

Other people at the event tweeting pictures of the booth.

Government-Funded Website Promotes Ivanka Trump’s New Book

Weeks after the State Department used its website and social media platforms to promote President Donald Trump’s private club in Florida, taxpayer-funded Voice of America is promoting Ivanka Trump’s new book on its website and Twitter account.

The link in the tweet is to an Associated Press article reposted on the Voice of America’s website. The piece characterizes Ivanka’s new book, entitled “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success,” as embodying the new White House employee’s transition from “sassy to serious.”

The book “offers earnest advice for women on advancing in the workplace, balancing family and professional life and seeking personal fulfilment [sic],” the piece notes. “She is donating the proceeds to charity and has opted not to do any publicity to avoid any suggestion that she is improperly using her White House platform.”

But the article and VOA’s promotion of it serve as publicity in and of itself. The article also doesn’t say which charity Ivanka plans to donate her book proceeds to, or how people will be able to verify she actually did so.

As we learned during the campaign, thanks largely to the reporting of the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, Ivanka’s father’s boasts about his charitable giving were grossly exaggerated. After he was elected president, Trump — who, like Ivanka, still owns his business — vowed to donate all profits from foreign governments.

But Trump has provided no evidence that he’s actually following through. The House Oversight Committee recently requested documents from the Trump Organization to prove his vow wasn’t just a bait-and-switch.

The degree to which Ivanka is actually following through on her plan to separate from the business she still owns while she serves in the White House is also a matter of trust (or lack thereof). She turned over day-to-day management of her company to her top executive and transferred its assets to a trust overseen by relatives of her husband, sparking concerns that all she has to do is pick up the phone to exert influence.

The New York Times reported that Ivanka “will receive regular financial reports on her company,” just as her father receives reports regarding the Trump Organization.

Shortly after the election, Ivanka’s brand marketed a $10,000 bracelet she wore during a 60 Minutes appearance.

Norm Eisen, former Obama administration ethics czar, tweeted that the VOA’s promoting of Ivanka’s book constitutes a violation of federal law.

This isn’t the first time Ivanka’s business interests have created controversy since the inauguration. On February 9, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway offered a shameless plug for Ivanka Trump’s brand during a Fox & Friends interview. Conway’s endorsement prompted the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to send the White House a letter asking for an investigation and recommending that Conway be disciplined, but the White House decided to let it slide.

After the State Department promoted Mar-a-Lago, Eisen told ThinkProgress that the White House’s refusal to discipline Conway would likely embolden future violations of 2635.702, a federal statute that prohibits federal employees from using public offices for private gain.

VOA’s promotion of Ivanka’s book comes as concerns mount that the government-funded media outlet is on its way to becoming an international Trump propaganda outlet — a possibility that became starkly apparent when the VOA provided stenography of Press Secretary’s Sean Spicer’s evidence-free claims that Trump’s inauguration was the best attended of all time (it wasn’t) on the first full day of Trump’s presidency.

As the New Republic reported last month, “A month after Trump was elected, Republicans in Congress changed the VOA’s governing structure, replacing its independent and bipartisan board of governors with a CEO appointed directly by the president. And in January, the Trump administration dispatched two young staffers to monitor the VOA’s operations and assist with the transition: Matthew Ciepielowski, who hails from the Koch-founded group Americans for Prosperity, and Matthew Schuck, who worked as a staff writer for the Daily Surge, a right-wing news site that traffics in ‘alternative facts.’”

“Taken together, the moves indicate that Trump is poised to turn the government news service — which reaches a global audience of 236 million every week through its radio and TV broadcasts — into a mouthpiece for his personal brand,” the New Republic added.

(h/t Think Progress)

 

Trump’s Tax Plan: Low Rate for Corporations, and for Companies Like His

President Trump plans to unveil a tax cut blueprint on Wednesday that would apply a vastly reduced, 15 percent business tax rate not only to corporations but also to companies that now pay taxes through the personal income tax code — from mom-and-pop businesses to his own real estate empire, according to several people briefed on the proposal.

The package would also increase the standard deduction for individuals, providing a modest cut for middle-income people and simplifying the process of filing tax returns, according to people briefed on its details. That proposal is opposed by home builders and real estate agents, who fear it would diminish the importance of the mortgage interest deduction. And it is likely to necessitate eliminating or curbing other popular deductions, a politically risky pursuit.

As of late Tuesday, the plan did not include Mr. Trump’s promised $1 trillion infrastructure program, two of the people said, and it jettisoned a House Republican proposal to impose a substantial tax on imports, known as a border adjustment tax, which would have raised billions of dollars to help offset the cost of the cuts.

With that decision, Mr. Trump acceded to pressure from retailers and conservative advocacy groups, but the move could deepen the challenge of passing a broad tax overhaul in Congress, where concern about the swelling federal deficit runs high. His plan would put off the difficult part of a tax overhaul: closing loopholes and increasing other taxes to limit the impact of tax cuts on the budget deficit.

Republicans are likely to embrace the plan’s centerpiece, substantial tax reductions for businesses large and small, even as they push back against the jettisoning of their border adjustment tax. The 15 percent rate would apply both to corporations, which now pay 35 percent, and to a broad range of firms known as pass-through entities — including hedge funds, real estate concerns like Mr. Trump’s and large partnerships — that currently pay taxes at individual rates, which top off at 39.6 percent. That hews closely to the proposal Mr. Trump championed during his campaign.

But Mr. Trump’s decision to extend the corporate tax cut to real estate conglomerates like his own will give Democrats a tailor-made line of attack.

“Yesterday, we learned President Trump wants to slash the corporate tax rate, even though corporations already dodge most of their tax responsibilities while making record profits,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of the liberal Americans for Tax Fairness. “Today, we find out it’s even worse. In trying to slash taxes for ‘pass through’ business entities, Trump is seeking to dramatically reduce his own tax bill.”

The people who were briefed on the plan spoke on the condition of anonymity before a formal announcement that Mr. Trump has said will come on Wednesday, three days before he reaches the 100-day mark in office with nothing to show for his promises to cut taxes or revamp the health care system.

The border adjustment tax may be revisited later but was considered too controversial to include now.

Spokeswomen for the White House and the Treasury Department declined to comment on the details of the plan before Wednesday’s announcement, which is expected to contain only broad principles, leaving unanswered crucial questions about the financing of the package and the process for advancing it through Congress.

Emerging from a meeting at the Capitol where he briefed Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday evening, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said participants had “very, very productive discussions” and were united in their desire to accomplish a tax overhaul this year.

The broad contours of the plan seemed to please conservatives who had worried in recent weeks that Mr. Trump, who has dropped or modified many of the major proposals of his campaign, was drifting away from the plan he had laid out for voters.

“Conservatives are going to be very happy with this plan, because it achieves a lot of the objectives that we’ve wanted: lower business taxes, simplification and not a major tax increase that is unacceptable,” said Stephen Moore, an economist at the Heritage Foundation who advised Mr. Trump’s campaign and helped craft his tax proposal.

But Mr. Moore conceded that finding ways to offset the large revenue reductions envisioned in the blueprint would be a challenge.

“That’s the unknown right now, is whether there is some sort of pay-for for any of this,” he said.

Government officials crafting the tax plans are aware of the math problem, one of the people involved in the proposal said, but they see the 15 percent corporate tax rate as a compelling starting point for negotiations. Mr. Trump may yet reveal other tactics for replenishing lost tax revenue, someone who has been briefed on the plans said.

But the final plans remain very much in flux. At midafternoon on Tuesday, for instance, it was still not clear whether personal income-tax rate cuts or an increase in the standardized deduction for individuals would be part of Wednesday’s announcement.

The demise of the border adjustment tax was met with relief by Republicans in the Senate, who had been cool to it from the start.

On Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said it was safe to conclude that the provision was “not going anywhere” because of skepticism in the Senate.

But Mr. Cornyn described Mr. Trump’s plan to cut the corporate income tax to 15 percent as “pretty aggressive,” with unknown consequences for the deficit.

Other Republican senators appeared ready to embrace a tax proposal that adds to the deficit in the name of jump-starting the economy. Republicans appear intent on using parliamentary rules that would block Democrats from filibustering the plan in the Senate, but would also put a time limit on the tax cuts.

“I’m open to getting this country moving,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. “I’m not so sure we have to go that route, but if we do, I can live with it.”

Most analysts say the notion that Mr. Trump’s tax cuts will pay for themselves is unrealistic. A Tax Foundation analysis concluded this week that, on its own, a 15 percent corporate tax rate would reduce federal revenue by about $2 trillion over a decade. To make up for those losses without raising taxes elsewhere, the economy would have to become 5 percent larger.

Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said he was also open to tax cuts with an expiration date if that was the only way to get them passed without Democratic support, pointing to President George W. Bush’s cuts.

“You look at the tax cuts from 2002 and 2003 — well over 90 percent of them became permanent law,” Mr. Blunt said.

Democrats have criticized Republicans for failing to engage with them on a tax overhaul. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, said he would be open to working with Republicans on a plan that would bring home corporate profits parked overseas and use some of the funds to pay for infrastructure.

But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Tuesday that he intended to pass tax legislation through budget rules that would block a filibuster. He accused Democrats of being more interested in “wealth transfers” than in spurring economic growth.

So far, the Senate has taken a back seat in tax discussions. The abandonment of the border adjustment tax will deal a blow to the comprehensive rewrite of the tax code championed by Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Brady said Tuesday that he would press ahead with the import tax, not merely because it would make up for lost revenue but because it would protect American jobs.

However, he acknowledged that his goal of producing legislation before summer was slipping.

“I’m less focused on the month than on the year for tax reform, which would be this year,” Mr. Brady said.

(h/t New York Times)

State Department Posts on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Raise Ethics Concern

Trump Mar a Lago resort

A glowing description of President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago — calling it the “winter White House” — was posted on State Department websites, bringing criticism from ethics watchdogs and Democrats.

The item, published ahead of an early April meeting with China’s president at the Palm Beach club, recounted the club’s history and Trump’s purchase and gilded redecoration of the property where he’s spent half his weekends since taking office.

Under the heading “A Dream Deferred” — drawing on a famous line from the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem” — it said the original socialite owner wanted Mar-a-Lago to be a retreat for American presidents but notes it didn’t happen until Trump won the election.

The text appeared on the website for Share America, a State Department platform intended to “spark discussion and debate on important topics;” the website for the U.S. Embassy in the United Kingdom and the Facebook page for the U.S. Embassy in Albania.

Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was among those taking to Twitter to question whether the posts violated government ethics rules.

The State Department initially declined to comment on the posts, but later unpublished them and said, “The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post.”

Three ethics watchdogs who reviewed the posts before they were taken down told NBC News they were troubling.

“They represent violations of a federal ethics regulation which prohibits the use of public office to endorse a product or enterprise,” said Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University Law.

“Calling it the ‘winter White House’ appears to suggest that Mar-a-Lago has an official governmental role, which would appear to provide a governmental endorsement.”

Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the post “reads almost like an ad for Mar-a-Lago.”

“If they weren’t trying to drive business there, you have to wonder what they were doing,” said Libowitz, who has previously sued Trump over other alleged ethics violations.

John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation said it didn’t matter that the context for the posts was Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping.

“Publishing promotional materials for the President’s private business is clearly inappropriate, whether he is using it for official business or not,” he said. “There is only one White House. If you’re telling the story of Mar-a-Lago, it’s the president’s private business.”

Mar-a-Lago has been a lightning rod for those accusing the Trump administration of conflicts of interest.

While Trump has turned over control of his businesses to his sons, critics have pointed out that initiation fees were doubled to $200,000 after his election and that the president’s frequent appearances there could provide unique access to him for those who can pay.

An encounter between Trump and two former Colombian presidents, who were invited by a Mar-a-Lago member, also raised questions — with the White House denying there was a secret meeting to discuss opposition to a Colombian peace deal with revolutionaries.

As NBC News has reported, since his January inauguration, Trump has spent seven of 14 weekends at Mar-a-Lago and at least 28 percent of his term traveling to or staying at the estate.

(h/t NBC News)

Update

The State Department has since removed the post.

President Trump Held Secret Pay to Play Mar-a-Lago Meeting with Two Colombian Ex-Presidents

President Trump secretly met with two former Colombian presidents critical of an Obama-era peace agreement between their home country’s sitting government and a far-left rebel group, according to a report.

Without listing it in his daily schedule or disclosing it to reporters, Trump met with Alvaro Uribe and Andres Pastrana at his Mar-a-Lago estate last weekend, the Miami Herald first reported on Thursday.

The stealthy meeting was apparently facilitated by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been openly skeptical of the landmark peace agreement between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for brokering the peace deal, which prompted outrage from some Colombians who say the FARC rebels are getting away with murder.

President Obama last year dedicated $450 million in foreign aid to help solidify the peace deal, which effectively ended a bloody 50-year power struggle between the leftist guerilla group and government forces. Obama faced backlash over the move, especially from Republicans.

It’s unclear what was discussed during last week’s Mar-a-Lago meeting, though speculation swirled that it might have been facilitated in an effort to tilt Trump’s opinion in a certain direction ahead of his sit-down with President Santos next month.

Santos is expected to ask Trump to make good on the Obama administration’s $450 million pledge.

The White House initially declined to discuss the matter, setting off a wave of speculation among Colombian media outlets.

A Trump administration spokeswoman eventually confirmed that the meeting occurred, but downplayed its significance, claiming that the two former Colombian heads of state just happened to be at the club at the same time as President Trump.

“There wasn’t anything beyond a quick hello,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the Colombian presidents were in the company of a Mar-a-Lago club member.

But Uribe and Pastrana, who are both staunch opponents of the peace deal with FARC, had a completely different take on the meet.

“Thanks to @POTUS @realDonaldTrump for the cordial and very frank conversation about problems and prospects of Colombia and the region,” Pastrana tweeted in Spanish after the meeting.

Uribe’s former vice president, Francisco Santos, echoed those comments, telling the Herald that the meeting was concise but to the point.

“We’re very worried,” Santos told the newspaper. “You have a perfect storm, and the (Santos) government says everything is going fine and we’re living in peace. And that’s not true.”

Trump’s secret meeting raises a number of questions, including his inclination to meet with people who are either connected to, or willing to themselves pay the $200,000 Mar-a-Lago membership fee.

Colombia’s ambassador to the U.S., Juan Carlos Pinzon, criticized Uribe and Pastrana for going through back channels to discuss sensitive matters with Trump ahead of Santos’ visit.

“We need to address these issues at home,” Pinzon told a Colombian radio station. “We need to wash our dirty laundry at home.”

(h/t New York Daily News)

Reality

President Trump has been in office for 91 days. He has spent 25 of them at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, often mingling with members and guests.

Since the election, the cost of membership has doubled to $200,000.

Mr. Trump often railed against pay-to-play politics on the campaign trail, repeatedly slamming a “broken system.”

Yet the access at Mar-a-Lago is unparalleled. Last weekend, two former presidents of Colombia were guests and quietly met with Mr. Trump.

Former Colombian President Andres Pastrana later tweeted about the meeting, thanking Mr. Trump for “the cordial and very frank conversation about the problems and prospects in Colombia and the region.”

The two men are opponents of current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who has not yet met with Mr. Trump. The encounter was not on Mr. Trump’s public schedule.

Five days later, White House press secretary Sean Spicer seemed surprised to hear about it.

“I’m just saying I’m unaware of the circumstances,” Spicer told reporters.

The White House later said the men “briefly said hello when the president walked past them.”

Club members have posted photos with military officers and even with the president himself.

Ivanka’s Company Won Approval for Chinese Trademarks on the Same Day She Dined with President Xi

Ivanka Trump’s $100 million made-in-Asia clothing line got a boost in early April when the Chinese government granted Donald Trump’s daughter with new trademarks. From the Associated Press:

On April 6, Ivanka Trump’s company won provisional approval from the Chinese government for three new trademarks, giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s second-largest economy. That night, the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to the president of China and his wife for a steak and Dover sole dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

What a coincidence, right? The same day Ivanka Trump is rubbing elbows with the President of China and his wife, the Chinese government makes moves favorable to her company and her wallet. Needless to say, this is running into an ethically murky, swamp-like area:

Using the prestige of government service to build a brand is not illegal. But criminal conflict of interest law prohibits federal officials, like Trump and her husband, from participating in government matters that could impact their own financial interest or that of their spouse. Some argue that the more her business broadens its scope, the more it threatens to encroach on the ability of two trusted advisers to deliver credible counsel to the president on core issues like trade, intellectual property, and the value of the Chinese currency.

“Put the business on hold and stop trying to get trademarks while you’re in government,” advised Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush.

Hitting the pause button on the pursuit of international trade deals and overseas construction projects seems like the least the Trump family should be doing to separate themselves from their businesses while they oversee the people’s business.

Based on booming sales, don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Some retail chains have decided not to carry Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, but her company reports online sales are at a record high. After Kellyanne Conway’s unethical sales pitch on Fox & Friends, in which she instructed viewers to buy Ivanka’s clothing online, the company reported a 207 percent increase in online orders in February. The same week President Xi dined with Ivanka Trump at Mar-a-Lago, a huge shipment from China arrived in the U.S.:

The week of the summit, 3.4 tons of Ivanka Trump handbags, wallets and blouses arrived in the U.S. from Hong Kong and Shanghai. U.S. imports of her merchandise grew an estimated 40 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to Panjiva Inc., which maintains and analyzes global shipping records.

Trump Advertises Mar-a-Lago’s Chocolate Cake in Interview

Donald Trump informed the Chinese president that he had launched missile strikes on Syria as the pair ate “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen”, the US president has claimed.

In an interview with Fox Business, Trump offered his first account of how he had broken the news to Xi Jinping as they dined at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida at the start of a two-day bridge-building summit last Thursday.

“I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. We are now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen. And President Xi was enjoying it,” Trump said.

“And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded. What do you do? And we made a determination to do it. So the missiles were on the way.

“And I said: ‘Mr President, let me explain something to you … we’ve just launched 59 missiles, heading to Iraq [sic] … heading toward Syria and I want you to know that.’

“I didn’t want him to go home … and then they say: ‘You know the guy you just had dinner with just attacked [Syria].’”

Asked how the leader of China, which alongside Russia has repeatedly blocked UN resolutions targeting the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, had reacted, Trump said: “He paused for 10 seconds and then he asked the interpreter to please say it again – I didn’t think that was a good sign.”

“And he said to me, anybody that uses gases – you could almost say, or anything else – but anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies, it’s OK. He was OK with it. He was OK.”

China has sought to portray last week’s summit – which came after months of tension between Trump’s administration and Beijing – as a resounding triumph.

“The meetings, positive and fruitful, mark a new starting point for the world’s most important bilateral relationship,” Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said in a typically-glowing commentary.

All mention of the US strikes on Syria was relegated from the front pages of state-run newspapers in a bid to prevent Trump’s dramatic military intervention overshadowing Xi’s visit.

Bill Bishop, a Washington-based China expert who tracks the country’s political scene on his Sinocism newsletter, said Beijing would not have welcomed Trump’s decision to break the news over dessert.

“The Chinese generally hate those kinds of surprises. The Chinese would have preferred it hadn’t happened while they were in the US. Clearly it overshadowed the summit,” he said.

But Bishop said Beijing had still managed to capitalise on the Mar-a-Lago meeting by spinning Xi as “Trump’s equal” in China’s domestic media. Beijing would also commemorate how the Syria strikes had driven a wedge between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“The Chinese have been a little bit worried about some kind of grand bargainwhere the US pivots away from Asia and creates some kind of alliance in Russia against China,” he said.

“So anything, frankly, that increases tensions between the US and Russia and anything that perhaps drags America into a Middle Eastern quagmire is actually pretty good for China because the US is distracted.

“It’s an unsolvable problem. If the US gets sucked into another conflict in the Middle East, it is less likely that the US is going to be focused or have the capacity to really pressure China on certain issues.”

China’s leaders had been losing sleep over Trump’s regular bouts of Beijing-bashing and his decision to make Peter Navarro – who has described China as a “despicable, parasitic, brass-knuckled and totally totalitarian power” – the head of his National Trade Council.

But Bishop said Chinese officials had been encouraged by Navarro’s apparent absence from the Mar-a-Lago talks.

Speaking to Fox Business, Trump claimed he had hit it off with the Chinese president. He said: “I really liked him. We had a great chemistry, I think … Maybe he didn’t like me but I think he liked me … we understand each other.”

Trump had less kind words for Assad. “This is an animal,” he said.

(h/t The Guardian)

Media

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Meeting With China’s Xi Jinping Raises Ethics Concerns

President Trump’s first face-to-face meeting today with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, will take place at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s family-owned resort in Florida. The laid-back setting is meant to give the two world leaders a chance to build a rapport, but government ethics experts question whether that’s appropriate.

Past presidents have hosted key leaders at government-owned properties like Camp David, but Mr. Trump is giving a personal touch for Xi.

The U.S.-China relationship has been under pressure over trade, North Korea and China’s expansion in the South China Sea.

As a candidate, Mr. Trump repeatedly blasted China, accusing Beijing of unfair trade practices that he equated to “rape” and “theft,” reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.

“We give state dinners to the heads of China. I said, ‘Why are you doing state dinners for them?’ They’re ripping us left and right,” Mr. Trump said.

Today the president tries to reboot the relationship by welcoming China’s president and his wife to Mar-a-Lago.

“It’s a venue that connotes the U.S. president is interested in building a personal relationship with Xi Jinping,” said Evan Medeiros, former National Security Commission China director in the Obama administration.

Between trade disputes and the threat of North Korea, the two leaders have plenty to discuss. But exactly where those conversations take place became a concern to Congress after Mr. Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to openly discuss North Korea’s missile test over dinner in February.

The government accountability office has now agreed to probe whether Mar-a-Lago has a secure space for classified communications, the type of Secret Service screening measures used on resort guests, and how the government ensures travel-related expenses are fair and reasonable.

“I’m meeting with the president of China on Thursday and Friday in Palm Beach, Florida, and I think we’re going to have a very interesting talk,” Mr. Trump said.

Also in question is whether the Trump family financially benefits from such a high-profile visit.

“The visit and the visit of the foreign leader attracts large amount of publicity, not just domestically but internationally,” government ethics specialist Kathleen Clark said.

Mr. Trump gave up the position of club president before inauguration. His son, Donald Trump Jr., now holds that title, according to a Florida alcohol license obtained by CBS News.

“When President Trump arranges to meet a foreign leader at one of his branded properties like Mar-a-Lago, what he is doing is he is actually using government office for private gain,” Clark said.

The White House has not responded to inquiries about whether or not the Chinese delegation will pay for any services while visiting Mar-a-Lago.

(h/t CBS News)

Trump Trust Revised So He Can Take Profits From His Businesses At Any Time

A newly surfaced detail in the trust agreement Donald Trump established to administer his business holdings shows the extent to which the President remains financially wedded to the Trump Organization months after moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As ProPublica reported Monday, Trump added a clause to his trust agreement on Feb. 10 that allows him to withdraw funds at any time from any of his businesses, which number more than 400, without disclosing it publicly.

“The Trustees shall distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request, as the Trustees deem necessary for his maintenance, support of uninsured medical expenses, or as the Trustees otherwise deem appropriate,” the document reads.

Before Trump took office, he promised to cede control of the Trump Organization to his two adult sons, who also pledged to keep the President in the dark about the company’s day-to-day operations. As it turns out, Trump not only may continue to withdraw money from his businesses, but his son Eric Trump also has said he plans to give his father regular financial updates. As ProPublica noted, the revised trust agreement stipulates that trustees “shall not provide any report to Donald J. Trump on the holdings and sources of income of the Trust.”

If Trump’s refusal to release any of his tax returns is any indication, the public is unlikely to learn any details about what profits Trump is taking from his businesses while he is in office.

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Still Benefiting From Business Empire

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities, according to ethics filings released by the White House Friday night.

Ms. Trump will also maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The hotel, just down the street from the White House, has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that foreign governments or special interests could stay there in order to curry favor with the administration.

It is unclear how Ms. Trump would earn income from that stake. Mr. Kushner’s financial disclosures said that Ms. Trump earned between $1 million and $5 million from the hotel between January 2016 and March 2017, and put the value of her stake at between $5 million and $25 million.

The disclosures were part of a broad, Friday-night document release by the White House that exposed the assets of as many as 180 senior officials to public scrutiny. The reports showed the assets and wealth of senior staff members at the time they entered government service.

Those disclosures included the assets of Gary D. Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who now leads the National Economic Council, Kellyanne Conway, the pollster and counsel to Mr. Trump and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist to the president.

Mr. Bannon disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization, $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign, and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three are backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, financiers and major Republican donors.

Mr. Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm into which income from his other investments appeared to flow. It was valued at between $5 million and $25 million. He also held bank accounts valued at up to $2.25 million, and rental real estate worth as much as $10.5 million.

Ms. Conway earned at least $842,614 last year, and perhaps slightly more, the filings show. Her assets are valued at between $11 million and at least $44.2 million.

Mr. Cohn is far wealthier, with assets valued between $253 million and $611 million, and income last year as high as $77 million. Another White House official, Reed Cordish, who heads up technology initiatives, accumulated assets as a Maryland developer valued as high as $424 million.

Mr. Trump’s administration is considered the most wealthy in American history, with members of his senior staff and cabinet worth an estimated $12 billion, according to a tally by Bloomberg. The Friday filings will add voluminous detail to that top-line figure. The White house chief of staff, Reince Priebus, for example, earned at least $1.18 million — nearly half of which came from the Republican National Committee, which he formerly led. His assets totaled between $604,008 and at least $1.26 million.

“I think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. The officials “have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets,” he said.

Until January, Mr. Kushner was the chief executive of Kushner Companies, a family-run real estate investment firm with holdings across the country. It is a growing business that has taken part in at least $7 billion of acquisitions over the past decade.

Late Friday, the White House released details of the plan devised by his advisers to avoid conflicts of interest between Mr. Kushner’s government role and the wide-ranging business empire he ran with his father. That business depends on foreign investment from undisclosed sources, as well as billions of dollars in loans from the world’s biggest financial services firms.

Although Mr. Kushner has stepped down from his management positions at the more than 200 entities that operated aspects of the family real estate business, he will remain a beneficiary of a vast majority of the business he ran for the past decade, through a series of trusts that already owned the various real estate companies.

The plan laid out on Friday “is not sufficient,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel and chief ethics officer for the Federal Election Commission. “While removing himself from the management of the businesses is an important step, he is still financially benefiting from how the businesses do. This presents potential for a conflict of interest. Given his level in the White House and broad portfolio, it’s hard to see how he will recuse himself from everything that may impact his financial interest.”

While the filing discloses Mr. Kushner’s personal lenders, it does not provide information on his business partners or lenders to his projects.

His real estate firm has borrowed money from the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group, Deutsche Bank and the French bank Natixis. It also received loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of a United States Justice Department investigation into allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes using undeclared accounts.

Most recently, his firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was the subject of controversy: Around the time his father-in-law received the Republican nomination last spring, Mr. Kushner’s firm began conversations with a Chinese company with ties to some of the Communist Party’s leading families about a plan to invest billions of dollars in the troubled office tower.

Mr. Kushner’s company and the firm, Anbang Insurance Group, agreed to end the talks on Wednesday after weeks of negative publicity about the deal, criticized as a bailout of the Kushners. The building had already been rescued by a number of prominent firms, including the private equity giant Carlyle Group, and Zara, the Spanish fashion retailer founded and owned by Amancio Ortega, one of the world’s wealthiest men.

Mr. Kushner has divested his stakes in any businesses connected to that property.

The disclosures do not reveal the names of investors and lenders to ventures that Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in. For example, the form shows Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in a limited liability corporation that owns a Trump-branded luxury rental high-rise building in Jersey City worth as much as $5 million. That project was financed with tens of millions of dollars from wealthy Chinese investors through a controversial visa-for-sale program called EB-5.

However, the filing does not disclose the names of any of those investors — or partners in any of his other projects.

“We don’t know who the business partners are in many of these investments,” Mr. Noble said, “and those business partners may also have interests that will be affected by how he advises the government. And that’s a concern.”

“He could have foreign business partners who have a real interest in policy, and he may be advising the president on those policies,” Mr. Noble added. “This is a dark area where we just don’t know what’s going on.”

In all, the Kushner company owns more than 20,000 apartments and approximately 14 million square feet of office space.

Previous disclosures by the United States Office of Government Ethics showed that Mr. Kushner had divested his interests in several entities, mostly partnerships connected to a venture capital firm run by his brother, Joshua, called Thrive Capital, that invests in technology firms like Instagram.

He also shed his interests in funds run by the private equity giant Blackstone Group — whose chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman, is an economic adviser to Mr. Trump — as well as BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

Over all, he has shed his stakes in 58 businesses.

He is still the sole primary beneficiary of a majority of the trusts that will retain assets, with his children as the secondary beneficiaries.

Mr. Kushner was required to submit some limited financial information for his wife, Ms. Trump, who will continue to receive payments from the Trump Organization as well as her fashion brand.

Ms. Trump, who now serves as an assistant to the president, resigned from her leadership roles at both companies. Instead of performance-based payments, Ms. Trump will receive fixed payments from T International Realty, the family’s luxury brokerage agency, as well as fixed fees from two entities related to real estate projects, the documents show.

Ms. Trump had previously rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which is overseen by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the trust at more than $50 million.

The brand is largely a licensing operation, meaning that it sells the use of Ms. Trump’s name to partners who manufacture her clothes, shoes and other accessories. Since it is privately held, little is known about the company’s financials, but The New York Times has previously reported that revenues were roughly between $4 million and $6 million in 2013, before the debut of a major partnership.

The disclosure forms released Friday for less senior White House staff members were not reviewed by the federal Office of Government Ethics. Only the White House Counsel’s Office examines their assets to determine if there are potential conflicts, and to decide what steps employees must take to sell assets, resign positions or recuse themselves from decisions.

Already, a complaint has been filed against at least one White House staff member for taking actions that might benefit his own financial interests. Christopher P. Liddell, an assistant to the president and the director of strategic initiatives, had been the chief financial officer of companies including Microsoft, International Paper and General Motors before taking his White House job. Until recently, he also owned stock in General Motors, according to disclosure forms, among more than 750 other companies.

But in late January and early February, according to a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mr. Liddell participated in meetings that involved several of the companies in which he still owned a total of about $2 million in stock, including International Paper and General Motors. Mr. Liddell, according to disclosures, sold these stock holdings by mid-February.

“It is Ethics 101 — the most basic thing you are not supposed to do: using your official capacity to benefit your financial interest,” said Norman Eisen, who served as a White House ethics lawyer during the Obama administration and now is a co-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The White House did not respond Friday when asked about the complaint.

(h/t New York Times)

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