Back in January, President Trump announced he’d be handing off his business operations to his two sons, ignoring calls from a number of government ethics groups to divest from the Trump Organization outright. To ease the nerves of watchdogs worried about potential conflicts of interest, his lawyer said Trump would be prevented from knowing or discussing the operations of the company with his sons, thanks to limited “information rights.” But now it looks like that’s not the case.
In an article published Friday in Forbes, Eric Trump claimed he and his dad never talk about the family business—a “steadfast pact” struck between the pair. Then, later in the same interview, he admitted he plans to keep the president updated on the Trump Organization “probably quarterly” during his four-year term.
Videos by VICE
“Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports, and stuff like that, but you know, that’s about it,” Eric Trump told Forbes. “My father and I are very close. I talk to him a lot. We’re pretty inseparable.”
If that happens, it’ll be just one more headache for all the good-government watchdogs already worried that the most powerful politician in the world may be making decisions for the country based on how they might benefit his business.
“He is breaking down one of the few barriers he claimed to be establishing between him and his businesses, and those barriers themselves were weak to begin with,” Larry Noble, former chief ethics officer at the Federal Election Commission, told Forbes. “But if he is now going to get reports from his son about the businesses, then he really isn’t separate in any real way.”
Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
