Trump’s new businesses — and new potential conflicts of interest
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Hello, Bitcoiners. Thank you very much. Hello. It's good to be with you.

It's good to be with you. Back in July, Donald Trump spoke at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville. He vowed to be a champion for the crypto industry. Ultimately, my promise to each and every one of you is this. I will be the pro-innovation and pro-Bitcoin president that America needs and our citizens deserve.

This will be one industry, but this will be a thriving industry, a great industry. Then, in September, less than two months before the election, he announced he was getting into crypto himself. Trump launched a venture called World Liberty Financial.

Former President Trump is rolling out a new cryptocurrency business. Trump announced World Liberty Financial in a live stream on X saying, quote, crypto is one of those things we have to do. And if we don't do it, China is going to do it. If we don't do it, other countries are going to do it. The U.S. will soon have a president who could make millions off of crypto. He's also the majority owner of a social media company, Truth Social, and of course, many other things like hotels.

In Trump's first term, there was a lot of outrage over potential conflicts of interest. Calls for hearings, as well as lawsuits, claims that Trump was using the presidency to enrich himself. Now, we are gearing up for round two.

A conflict of interest is when somebody has, you know, competing interests that they might be serving simultaneously. Jonathan O'Connell is an investigative reporter for The Post. I'm sure lots of people at their own jobs have some rule about you have to be working in...

pursuit of your own employer's mission and not that of another financial interest or another competing company. It's similar in the government. I think people still expect that the president should be working on behalf of the people who elected him or her. Jonathan says Trump's new business interests raise new questions about how he might profit from the presidency. Social media and crypto are particularly of consequence right now because

The federal government is really going to start regulating those companies in new ways. And he, as president, is going to have a big hand in writing the policies for industries in which he is now a major investor. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martine Powers. It's Tuesday, December 17th. Today, how Trump's crypto and social media businesses could present what ethics experts describe as unprecedented potential conflicts of interest in his second term.

I'm going to turn this one over to my co-host, Elahe Izadi, who spoke with Jonathan. ♪

So, Jonathan, I'm really happy that you're here because you covered Trump's conflicts of interest during his first term. And now there are questions about potential conflicts of interest for his second term. But first of all, let's just clarify one important thing. For most people who work in the federal government, there are strict rules around conflicts of interest. But what obligation does a president have? In terms of rules that have ever been enforced, no.

Almost nothing.

The basic conflict of interest rules that apply to somebody who wants to work for the federal government, like being just an agency employee at whatever, any agency, do not apply to the president or the vice president. Okay. So like if I just work for like the Food and Drug Administration or whatever, like I will, I'm under more, I'm under stricter rules than the president. The people have not chosen you for that job. You have, you know, the people have chosen him and the vice president to be vice president. Conflicts and all. Exactly. What about other presidents? What have they done historically? Yeah.

you know the precedent again this is another area where trump has taken the norms and kind of just broken them in half and decided a new way you know almost every president dating back to i think lyndon johnson has put their assets into a blind trust which is saying i will take everything i own other than maybe my home my retirement account and let an independent person manage them now it doesn't mean they weren't familiar with what they owned when the stuff went in there but they have no say over what they sold what is purchased how the investments are managed

The most famous example probably is Jimmy Carter had like President Carter had a... Didn't he have like a peanut farm or something? Yeah, I think it was almost like a peanut production or distribution company in Georgia. I see. And he put that into a blind trust when he became president because God forbid we had him doing something to increase the, I don't know, the sale price of peanuts while he was president. Hey, could have happened. But that was... Obviously, the professional ethics experts in Washington are having to wrestle with this like kind of whole new world where Trump is deciding what he wants to do. And...

that has not been easy so far. Okay, Jonathan, so let's spend some time with Trump's new big business interests, social media and crypto. Of those two, which is the most valuable to him at this point? The biggest single thing that he owns now in terms of

valuations is his stock in his social media company, Truth Social, the parent company of that, Trump Media and Technology Group. It really owns one thing right now, which is Truth Social. Okay. He owns about 115 million shares of that company. That's according to securities filings by the parent company of it. Out of how many? It's around like 53% of the total. Wow. It's worth more than all of his commercial real estate, all of his golf courses, all of his office building in New York, Trump Tower, all that stuff together is worth less than his social media shares. Wow.

So his stake recently, like around mid-December, you saw the stock trading around $38 or so.

That would put the value of his stake at over $4 billion. So it's the biggest deal for him financially, even when you compare all the things he's kind of most known for. And remind me, how did he even get involved in starting a social media business? Well, you'll recall that Trump was kicked off of some social media networks, I think especially after the January 6th riot, and he decided he wanted to have his own. So Truth Social is a social media network favored particularly by people who

I know our right wing or Trump fans. You know, it's much, much smaller than the larger networks, X, Facebook, Instagram, etc. You just haven't seen the type of growth that one would expect for the valuation that it's getting. How do they make money? They sell advertising on Truth Social. Uh-huh.

But the company is worth billions of dollars because people want to own the stock. I see. They could own it because they think it's going to be worth more in the future, but they could also own it because they want to be part of the movement that Donald Trump has started and is growing. I mean, that is definitely part of the reason the stock is worth so much that it is.

Okay, so what potential conflicts does Truth Social pose for Trump as president? Like, how could his actions as president affect the bottom line for that company? It's a great question. I think that everybody in Congress, in the White House, is expecting there to be a discussion about how to regulate social media. I mean, people have been asking for this for a number of years. Congress has been talking about it for years.

And now Trump being, you know, the incoming president is going to have a chance to regulate social media. And at the same time, he has this huge, enormously valuable stake in his own social media company. So, for instance, could the regulations be written or the new social media regulations be approved that would benefit some companies over others, maybe punish much larger ones, but not ones that are his size or free?

free all of them to certain levels of free speech that they are not free to now in the terms that a lot of Republicans use. Could Trump somehow dictate that the FCC pursue investigations against some companies and not his own or somehow, again, tilt the playing field in favor of his company? Nobody's seen any of this now. We don't have any evidence of this, but that's what people are paying attention to. OK, so that's a social media business. What about Trump's crypto enterprise? We heard a little bit

from Trump earlier in the episode, him talking up crypto. How did he get involved into crypto? And what is this company? And how much is this worth? Yeah, I mean, Trump was a sort of an old school sort of skeptic of crypto previously and had said it seemed scammy. And I think, you know, I think he had some tweets before about how it was for drug dealers and scam artists or something like that. Oh, OK. It's come around, you know, like a lot of people have. Yeah, that's true. We don't know exactly how many Americans own crypto now, but it's certainly in the millions. Yeah.

So World Liberty Financial, a similar playbook in some ways. I mean, it's worth much, much less to him than the social media company, which is enormously wealthy for him. But, you know, he has allowed World Liberty Financial to put his name, his face on all their marketing projects. And he taped a live stream from Mar-a-Lago during the campaign where he, you know, there was a moderator there interviewing him. And, you know, an interview with this leading candidate for president during the campaign is a great promotion for Mar-a-Lago.

a crypto company. I do believe in it. I also know a lot of friends that are really into it. And my, my kids, I mean, Baron knows so much about this. Eric, and he's, Baron's a young guy, but he knows that he talks about his wallet. He's got four wallets or something. And I'm saying, what is a wallet? Explain this to me. But he knows this inside out. And Eric,

He, you know, he's been granted a big stake of the tokens that they've produced and he's been like their best pitchman. So, Jonathan, then how does his crypto venture, this business, pose a potential conflict of interest? You know, in some ways it is similar to social media where, you know, he has a stake now in cryptocurrency and he's going to be, you know, playing a role in regulating that along with the Congress. I think everyone's expecting that.

So I think there's possibly two immediate effects of this. One is I think everyone is expecting the value of probably all crypto or just about all crypto to go up. I mean, you've already seen Bitcoin hit this record number. Other crypto has been jumping up in value. I think that's just because everyone is generally expecting that there'll be a loosening of regulations on crypto and that will help values. I think the second thing that you may see is you may see people try to buy into Trump's coin in particular because

in order to affiliate themselves with him in some way. This is another access point to him. I mean, you've already seen Justin Sun. He's a Chinese entrepreneur. He spent $30 million on World Liberty Financial coins. And based on the agreement Trump has with World Liberty Financial, he will be seeing a big chunk of those profits. And Justin Sun, he has actually been charged with fraud by the SEC. In a filing this year, Sun actually asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, so he obviously doesn't think there's much to it.

But, you know, he has publicly disclosed this, that he is buying into this coin affiliated with Trump. And I think it's just natural that people wonder, you know, why are people doing this? You know, why would people buy this coin? Is it specifically for financial reasons? Is it because they are interested in making money on crypto? Is it because they want to affiliate themselves with Trump in some way? I just think these are the kinds of questions that are going to keep coming up probably. Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty big question. I mean, has Trump said anything about whether he

He's going to try to reduce potential conflicts of interest once he takes office. He's made no new commitments so far. But, you know, he has said on social media recently, I am not selling my true social stock. You know, I'm keeping this, which is a signal to all the other owners like, yeah, stay in this with me. His transition folks have said he's putting himself and his commitment to the American people above his own personal financial interests. He doesn't need this job. He was making money and doing just fine in the private sector.

He's sacrificing for the people. But in terms of specifics, how they will handle these businesses that he's going to be regulating and, you know, writing policy that will affect, they haven't said anything so far. After the break, Elahe and Jonathan will look at what happened last time Donald Trump was president and what it might tell us about how he'll handle potential conflicts of interest this time. We'll be right back.

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ZBiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash reports and use the code reports. So Jonathan, you know, we've been talking about what could happen in this next Trump term, but I want to talk about what happened after Trump won in 2016. Like we've been through this before, you could say, and maybe that can give us

an indication of what Trump could or could not do this time around. So after Trump won in 2016, did he do anything to distance himself from his various businesses? Yes. And again, it was simpler than in some ways because he was mostly a real estate mogul at that time. Most of his assets were in real estate. And he had all the press conference in mid-January, January 11th, I think it was.

You might remember there were like these really tall stacks of paper all over the place. These papers are just some of the many documents that I've signed turning over complete and total control to my sons. So he resigned from all of his businesses when he entered the White House the first time. And he did not create a blind trust.

He created another type of trust, which is not like a blind trust at all, except it has the word trust in it. But he put his assets, all of his assets, into a trust that was controlled by Eric Dunn Jr. and his CFO at the time, Alan Weisselberg. ...is my two sons, who are right here, Don and Eric...

And he made a number of other commitments. He committed to, you know, not discussing his businesses at length with his son, Eric, although there's, you know, they did talk about it periodically. And then he made a number of other commitments.

You know, the Trump organization with Eric and Don Jr. at the helm, they committed to making no new foreign deals while their father was the president. And they committed to donating profits from his businesses that had come directly from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury. So how did that all go? Because based on what you just said, it sounded like Trump did take some steps to separate himself from his businesses. Yeah.

It was an absolute mess the whole time. It was a distraction. Despite the stacks of papers? Despite the stacks. There was tons of litigation. There were lawsuits. There were criminal investigations. There were a million news stories. I mean, one aspect of it that has been removed is, you know, at the time he was opening a luxury hotel right on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. At the same time he was going in the White House. I mean, no novel writer would get away with putting that in their book. I don't think probably a screenwriter. Yeah.

And like beside just the scene of it all, like was that hotel making money because he was president, could you say? So over and over again, we saw CEOs of companies who were coming to visit the president, leaders of foreign countries, other lobbyists who have business before the president and the administration come to Washington and stay at his hotel over and over again. Would they have done that had he not been the president? I guess we can't know for certain, but it sure seems unlikely.

And paradoxically, the hotel lost money on an annual basis and an operating basis because lots of people wouldn't go there. And you can't really make money off of just half the country for the most part. You need everybody to want to try your hotel, you know, not just Republicans. But when he sold it, he made a killing. I seem to also remember during Trump's first term, there being a lot of questions and stories about,

about whether the government was paying really high amounts of money for Secret Service and other security detail to stay at Trump properties. And then also stories and questions about foreign governments buying up and staying at these luxury hotels owned by Trump to curry favor. I mean, is that something that happened? Is my recollection of this correct? You're absolutely right. No, both of those things happened. I mean,

Because Trump and his children have Secret Service protection and they frequently stay at his own properties, the government is paying to have rooms in those properties. And the amount that he charges them or his company charges them, you know, sometimes the government is paying rates more than you'd expect. Is it a huge deal to Trump's bottom line? No. Does it bother a lot of people that he does that? Yes. So that really stuck out for that reason. I mean—

A number of foreign leaders, it's been documented, stayed at the Trump Hotel in Washington when they were in town to visit him. I mean, I remember we did a project in May of his first year in office where we had a post reporter in the hotel every day for the month. And I remember Joe Heim having breakfast there.

in the hotel for us, one of our colleagues. And he was sitting next to the Romanian prime minister, I believe, was in there just to like, as part of his visit to Washington. So like, and there would be, you know, delegations that would book dozens of rooms and, you know, spend tens of thousands of dollars there. And that bothered people. Well, yeah, I remember people were bothered and this word kept coming up.

Right.

You know, this is really the only sort of anti-fraud provision in the Constitution in regards to the president. You know, we wrote a ton of stories about the Emoluments Clause at that time because it seemed like this might be the thing that really affects a president's behavior. There were a number of lawsuits filed over it, some litigation. And, you know, frankly, in terms of how it affected Trump's behavior, I

I think, in effect, it did probably very little. There was no court ruling emerged that forced his hand in any way. And by the time that he left office, all those cases went away. So it didn't end up having that, you know, in terms of a tangible effect on him, really anything.

Jonathan, I'm just curious if you think the American public even cares about conflicts of interest in 2024, because this is a reoccurring theme. And do people even care that he's about to become president again and that they're even more complicated conflicts of interest than the first time around? I'm really I'm genuinely curious how much people care. You know, as somebody who has written many dozens of stories about his business, you know, for close to a decade now, people have written books about his business, you

You know, there have been, again, many lawsuits, many congressional hearings about whether he and sometimes how he has enriched himself as the president. Are people going to bother this time or just or are they going to say like, OK, well, we kind of know who this guy is. We reelected him knowing these things. And now it's kind of up to him to decide what he wants to do. I don't want to say that he did whatever he wanted his first term. He didn't. I mean, one of the better examples of him sort of modifying his behavior midcourse was

his dural golf course in resort when florida was was losing money he spent a lot of money upgrading it

And then the U.S. had to host the G7 summit. I don't know if you remember this or not. And the government announced that it was going to do a nationwide search for the best place to host the G7 summit. And then very quickly announced his chief of staff went on TV and announced after the search, we figured out the best place is Donald Trump's Doral Resort in Florida, which was like the most in your face. We are using the government specifically to drive money right to a property of Trump's while he's the president.

And people, including Republican senators, were like, no, that's too much. And they quickly reversed that decision. There are still ways to for public opinion and legislators to say like, hey, you can't we don't want you to do this. And like Trump has listened. I don't want to say he's just done whatever he wanted. I think it's not going to be to me a statute or a regulation that will.

affect the way he handles this. I think it's really what the public thinks. Will they react poorly to some of his decisions regarding his business? Will they really feel like he's earned a position where he should do what he wants with his business? You know, will people try to shame him and will he feel ashamed if he tries to do things that could enrich him while he's president? Well, Jonathan, thanks so much for joining. I love being here. Thank you for having me.

Jonathan O'Connell is an investigative reporter for The Post. He spoke to my co-host, Elahi Izadi. Drew Harwell, Tony Rahm, and Michael Kranich contributed reporting on this topic. And one more note. After Jonathan and Elahi taped this conversation, we heard another piece of relevant news. In January, the House Republicans will hold their annual retreat at Donald Trump's Doral Resort in Florida.

Hundreds of Republican members of Congress and their staffers will pay for rooms and food. That means a big financial haul for the resort. So as you just heard, there's a lot going on in the news about politics and the incoming Trump administration. But there's a lot of other stuff going on, too. And here's one last story that caught my eye and really just made me chuckle.

One of our colleagues in the sports section has a deep dive investigation into a college football phenomenon, the popularity of bi-week weddings. So for context for non-college football fans, the fall season is usually packed with game days scheduled for every Saturday, except for the one or two weekends of the season where the team gets a rest, a bi-week.

And for newly engaged couples whose families are invested in a particular team, this creates a conundrum. Do you abandon your dreams of a fall wedding? Or do you accept that some portion of your guests will be staring at their phones during your ceremony? That leaves only one solution, a bi-week wedding. ♪

Sports reporter Emily Giambalvo took a closer look at this phenomenon. She analyzed three years' worth of data from the popular wedding website, The Knot, and she matched it up with game dates. She found that for the majority of teams in the major conferences, idle weeks are, on average, more popular wedding dates than game day Saturdays. That's especially true for teams in the SEC.

That matches up with what Emily heard from wedding vendors she spoke with. One event planner in Omaha said that the surge in event bookings, the moment when the game day calendar is released, is so intense and competitive, she started calling it the Hunger Games effect. ♪

That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. If you love the show, help other people discover it by leaving a rating on Spotify or a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Today's show was produced by Laura Benshop with help from Ariel Plotnick. It was mixed by Sam Baer and edited by Allison McAdam and Rina Flores. Thanks to Emma Brown and Emily Giambalvo. I'm Martine Powers. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post. ♪

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