Another day, another report of Donald Trump being a crooked bastard while in office because honestly who the hell would have expected otherwise.
[A]s the Trump Organization rolls out its new hotel line across the country — properties that the Trumps will manage and their partners will own — a partnership with Alterra may invite the foreign entanglements and potential conflicts of interest that the company said it sought to avoid in its international dealings.
That's from a New York Times look at the new hotel partnership between the Trump Organization, putatively run by Uday and Qusay Trump while their pa is off running the government for a while, and a Turkish company run by a man who literally calls himself "the Turkish Trump," a nickname that apparently isn't nearly the insult in Turkey that you would presume it to be. Yes, he's tied to Russian projects. Yes, his company appears to freely wheel and deal with mysterious companies based in the world's most egregious tax havens.
And yes, the Trump Organization is going ahead with this partnership despite a previous pledge to put new international deals on hold so as to not run afoul of that whole Constitutional ban on being a crooked bastard who pockets money and gifts from foreign favor-seekers. In theory Trump's crack team of ethics lawyers will have to sign off on that. That's not a punchline, though it sure sounds like one.
The potential partnership with Mr. Sarimsakci’s firm has not yet cleared those ethical hurdles, and lawyers scrutinizing the deal have privately raised concerns about some of the foreign connections, including Yusuf’s ties to Russia, according to a person briefed on the matter but who was not authorized to speak publicly about Trump Organization business.
Feel free to place your bets now as to whether Trump's hand-picked team of Ethics Guys will find that it's perfectly fine for the Trump Organization to go ahead with the deals after all. Yeah, we know. This is probably a story that should be taken more seriously—but c'mon. Not a week goes by in which we don't learn that Trump and his offspring are ignoring not only established ethical norms but every last vow Donald Trump himself ever personally made. Donald Trump could sell Everglades National Park to the Russian mob and his fellow Republicans would merely hold loud, angry press conferences condemning the mean-spirited journalists who found out about it.