Conflicts of interest in the Oval Office Trump rakes in billions with these private deals

For Donald Trump, public office and private business appear to be in no contradiction. Conflicts of interest at a glance.

"All my life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy", Donald Trump once boasted during the pre-election campaign for his first presidency. "I grabbed as much money as I could grab. But now I want to be greedy for the United States." The four years that followed have shown: The US president and his family don't seem to care about separating business from politics.

Donald Trump's empire includes real estate, Trump Media - and now cryptocurrencies. This underlines the fact that the US president is once again mixing private interests with public office in his second term of office.

The new president's empire now consists of several business branches. The Trump Organization has become a huge conglomerate consisting of numerous companies. The core business is the management of real estate - most of it in the USA. However, the group also operates 15 hotels and 12 golf courses in the luxury segment.

During his first term in office, Donald Trump handed over the operational management of the Trump Organization to his sons, but he remains involved as the owner.

However, there are changes compared to the first term of office: With Trump Media, Trump now also controls a listed company. The media company includes the social media platform Truth Social. In addition, Trump and his wife Melania each launched a kind of digital commemorative coin - a meme coin - shortly before the handover of office.

Donald Trump knows how to turn his popularity into money like no other politician. Trump's merchandise machinery was already running at full throttle during the election campaign. His supporters can still buy gold Trump sneakers, a Bible, guitars, perfume, clothes, mugs and other items with Trump branding.

On Friday, a few days before Inauguration Day, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency, which can be traded under the name $TRUMP. The coin currently has a market capitalization of over ten billion dollars. Shortly after her husband, Melania Trump followed suit with her own meme coin $MELANIA.

Like $TRUMP, the coin is technically based on the cryptocurrency platform Solana and is something of a digital commemorative coin that can be traded. And just like the president's coin, there is an indication that $MELANIA is not intended as an investment object or security, but as an expression of support.

The US President has influence over laws and rules. Above all, he also controls the authorities and can therefore influence regulation.

Regulation is particularly important for cryptocurrencies. As these are highly volatile, changes in market conditions can cause extreme fluctuations. The Biden government, for example, has opted for restrictive rules. Trump, on the other hand, has already announced that he will relax his policy on cryptocurrencies. By selling their own digital currency, he and his entourage benefit from massive price increases.

In addition, a foreign government or company could buy the speculative asset. The Wall Street Journal reports that this could be an attempt to influence the Trump administration and buy a favor, so to speak.

There is no law requiring new US presidents to divest themselves of their investments and companies. Since 1970, however, all of them have decided to take this step on their own initiative - all except Trump.

Conflicts of interest of this kind are actually prohibited in the USA in the "Criminal Conflict of Interest" for civil servants and state employees. For example, they are not allowed to hold shares in companies that fall within their area of responsibility. However, the law does not apply to the President, Vice President and members of Congress. These officials are elected by the people and are considered independent by the constitution and are therefore not subject to the law.

Shortly after taking office, Donald Trump repealed a rule decreed by the Biden administration that was intended to curb the power of lobbyists in Washington. Specifically, members of the government were not allowed to accept gifts from lobbyists or lobbying organizations due to the "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel".

The decree also contained several clauses, including a "revolving door ban". The latter prohibited all government employees from working with regulations and contracts related to their former employer or former clients for a period of two years after their appointment.

The ethics pledge was part of Biden's efforts to crack down on shadow lobbying, through which former government officials can influence policy without registering as lobbyists.

Trump does not share these concerns. Under his administration, bribing politicians with gifts will effectively be legal again in Washington. The revolving doors in Washington are likely to swing faster again.

The historic "Old Post Office Pavilion" building complex on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., not far from the White House, belongs to the US government. However, Donald Trump has leased it from the government and turned it into a five-star hotel, the Trump International Hotel. In other words: Trump is his own landlord.

Actually, he should have parted with the luxury hotel back in 2017. A passage in the US constitution prohibits the president from accepting donations and gifts from abroad. However, Trump is still pocketing millions through the hotel - thanks in part to the many foreign representatives who rent rooms or book events there.

According to a report by the House of Representatives, Trump earned 5,572,548 dollars from deals with the Chinese government during his first term of office, as reported by the investigative portal "Crew". The sum is made up of bookings by Chinese delegations at Trump hotels in Washington and Las Vegas, among other things.

Furthermore, according to a report by the Democrats, Trump had members of the Secret Service stay at the Trump International Hotel at inflated prices. Trump also profited from bookings by people hoping to get a job in the government or a presidential pardon.

And then there are the activities of the Chinese state-owned bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in New York: during the four years of his first term in office, ICBC paid him an estimated 7 million dollars to rent office space in Trump Tower, according to Forbes.

Strikingly, in 2021, just as Joe Biden moved into the White House, ICBC suddenly left Trump Tower. This was despite the fact that the bank had signed a five-year lease extension shortly beforehand.

A geopolitical connection between ICBC's activities has never been proven. For "Forbes", however, the matter seems clear: "It's hard to look at either of these developments - the lease extension or the sudden exit - without wondering whether China was trying to do a favor."

The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) was founded by Donald Trump in February 2021. Important projects include Truth Social and a planned streaming service called TMTG+, which is said to include "non-woke" offerings.

Trump controls 53 percent of Trump Media. The stake has been transferred to the "Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust". Although this means that Donald Trump has no direct influence over Trump Media, his interests remain tied to it.

Trump continues to benefit from the company's profits. He can also dissolve the trust at any time. To prevent a conflict of interest, he would have had to sell his shares or place them in a blind trust - a fund with strict conditions in which the assets are managed independently and without the influence of the owner or his family.

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