Our president

You really should read this article by Annie Lowrey in the Atlantic.

The president owns a business.

The president owns a business entity composed of roughly 500 other business entities.

The president owns a business entity that he no longer controls, but his sons do.

The president owns a business entity set up to allow him to withdraw funds “at his request.”

The president owns a business entity designed to reduce his tax burden, shift risk, and maximize profits. There is no independent public accounting of the machinations of this business entity, nor do his sons and other company managers answer to a White House ethics board. The company remains a company, meant to make money for the president.

The president is still heavily invested in any number of industries his government regulates, including real estate, tourism, and hospitality. The president passed tax cuts with specific carve-outs for real-estate developers.

The president’s company operates a hotel just a few blocks from the White House. Foreign dignitaries have spent thousands of dollars there, as has his inaugural committee, as have Republican politicians and lobbyists, though there is no complete and transparent accounting available. This translates into additional profits for the president.

The president’s company manages, owns, or operates numerous other hotels. Government agencies have spent thousands of dollars staying at them during his presidency, enriching the president with revenue collected from taxpayers.

The president’s organization has said it donates the profits from “foreign government patronage” at those hotels. It has not identified its customers or provided a detailed accounting of how and how much money it has made from foreign patrons.

Throughout his time in the White House, the president has continued to own shares in a number of individual companies, including Halliburton and Apple. His government taxes and regulates those firms.

The president has business interests in countries around the globe, countries with which he sets trade, security, economic, and diplomatic relations. These include the United Arab Emirates, Canada, India, and Turkey.

The president owns a Florida resort and social club that has become his Camp David. The social club has raised membership prices and sold tickets to events with the promise of access to the president.

The president runs a personal charity. The New York attorney general said she found a “shocking pattern of illegality” there, “including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.” The charity is now dissolving.

The president runs a now-dissolving personal charity that for years donated to other charities, many of them seemingly linked to the president or his businesses. Its largest gift went to restore a fountain outside one of the president’s hotels, and its smallest appears to have paid for one of his sons’ Boy Scouts dues.

The president seeded his investments with inheritances from his father. The president committed tax fraud when inheriting his father’s fortune, an exhaustive New York Times investigation found.

The president’s real-estate projects are alleged or have been found to have misled investors and potential investors. That includes projects in the Dominican Republic, Canada, Panama, and the United States.

The president and his staff members have promoted the president’s personal brand dozens of times.

The president has not sold off controversial investments, foreign investments, investments in industries he now regulates, or investments in businesses that receive payments from the United States government or foreign governments. He is the first modern president to decline to do so.

The president has not put his investments in a blind trust. He is the first modern president with substantial financial interests to decline to do so.

The president has never released his tax returns. He is the first modern president to decline to do so.