Can our system handle Trumps self-dealing?
By Sarah Posner
September 6 at 3:23 PM
... two investigative reports .. show how Trump’s refusal to divest himself from his global business holdings has created a new ecosystem, outside the view of the public and the oversight capabilities of other branches of government. In the new .. ecosystem, the world’s wealthiest people and corporations can buy direct access to the president, simultaneously lining his pockets while achieving their own personal or policy goals.
... "wealthy people with interests before the government have a chance for close and confidential access to the president as a result of payments that enrich him personally." This .. is .. unprecedented; as former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub told the newspaper, "We never thought we’d see anyone push the outer limits in this way."
... no one — not the framers of our Constitution or lawmakers of any era in U.S. history — ever anticipated a president who would retain a lucrative stake in such a far-reaching business empire once in office, despite the blatant and extensive conflicts of interest it has set in motion. Worse, no one envisioned that a president would so brazenly snub his nose at ethical standards intended to uphold the simple credos that access to the president of the United States is not for sale and the presidency is not a profit-making enterprise.
It’s precisely because such contempt for ethics was unimaginable that no constraints against Trump-like behavior were ever put in place. And now we are beginning to see the effects ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/09/06/what-if-our-system-cant-handle-trumps-out-of-control-self-dealing/?utm_term=.8d3a03cf4ee2
