Donald Trump’s business and lawyers, in January: We will absolutely vet all business deals for conflicts of interest to reassure voters that Trump’s official actions “are for their benefit and not to support his financial interests.”
Donald Trump’s business and lawyers, in March: We have no comment on that business deal that stands to enrich Trump.
Mother Jones reports:
The first deal completed after Trump's swearing-in suggested the vetting procedures are weak. This transaction, as Mother Jones reported, was the sale of a $15.8 million condo to a Chinese American businesswoman who peddles access to Chinese elites and who has ties to a front group established by China's military intelligence apparatus. Angela Chen's connections to Chinese officials and military intelligence evidently weren't a cause for concern to the Trump Organization. The condo sale went through on February 21, with Chen apparently paying the $15.8 million in cash—roughly $2 million more than a unit one floor below. (Chen had lived in the same Trump-owned Park Avenue building in a smaller apartment for years. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump lived in the same building before their move to Washington.) Contacted by Mother Jones earlier this month, Burchfield, the Trump Organization's outside ethics adviser, declined to comment on the sale or how it was vetted. [...]
On Thursday, Burchfield, a veteran corporate litigator who specializes in political law and largely represents Republican clients, declined to comment regarding the vetting process for new Trump deals. He would not talk about any transactions approved or denied since he began advising the Trump Organization. At Trump's January 11 press conference, Dillon promised that the outside ethics adviser would provide "written approval" of any new deal, ostensibly explaining why a transaction does not pose a conflict for the president. Burchfield has not publicly disclosed details about the written approval process.
So it sounds like we’re back to “just trust us” and perhaps “conflict of interest rules don’t apply to the president, anyway.” Who could ever have predicted that Trump wouldn’t follow through 100 percent on his half-hearted, late in the game, weak, and nonspecific claims about how ethical he was going to be?