Were folders stuffed with Trump's 'business plan' papers blank props?

[GMDino]

(01-13-2017, 10:55 PM)bfine32 Wrote: It makes zero difference. As I said before I started entertaining myself with the various responses I have received as to the magnitude of pages in the folders being blank:

Why does anyone care? Shouldn't they be concerned with the actual arrangement? They really can't point to that, so they will point to the petty.

Quote:Trump's Plan To Shift His Businesses Is Lacking, Ethics Experts Say

Former White House ethics lawyer Norman Eisen, who served under President Obama, said Trump plan doesn't even come close to meeting legal requirements.


"There's a whole body of federal law, so what Mr. Trump announced yesterday is totally deficient and it's based on a distorted understanding," Eisen said in an interview on Morning Edition. "Either he's been fed a bad understanding of the Constitution American law by his counsel or he came to it naturally."

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said Trump did not address all the ethical problems involved in this decision.

"I think what we saw this morning was essentially an exercise in smoke and mirrors to give the appearance of doing something about the ethics problems, the Emoluments Clause problems," Clark said on All Things Considered Wednesday.

Essentially, she said, the Emoluments Clause restricts Trump from accepting payments from foreign governments.

FACT CHECK: Trump Lawyer's Claim And Comparison To Rockefeller Is A Head Scratcher

Eisen said the same constitutional restriction extends beyond profits and "encompasses gifts, revenues of any kind, permitting, trademarks."

Richard Painter, who served as an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said the branding of Trump's name on buildings across the globe could also potentially become the focus of terrorist attacks.

"This is the type of thing that not only creates ethics problems but a strategic problem for the United States," he said. "It could endanger people's lives."
At Trump's news conference, his lawyer Sheri Dillon said giving up ownership would hurt his company and "greatly diminish the value of the assets."

"President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built," she said.

But the government's chief ethics officer said Trump does need to divest.

"I don't think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the United States of America," Walter Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, said Wednesday.

Eisen and Painter say that giving up his role as a businessman is a fair expectation for the next president.

"All we're asking Mr. Trump to do — it's very simple — sign a piece of paper, turn the properties over to a trustee to figure out what to do with them," Eisen said.

Painter said Trump needs to take his focus off just making money.

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Quote:[url=http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38591754]Trump Organization handover plan slammed by ethics chief


The director of the US Office of Government Ethics has criticised Donald Trump's plan to hand control of his business empire to his sons before his inauguration on 20 January.


The plan does not match the "standards" of US presidents over the last 40 years, Walter Shaub said.

A Trump lawyer said earlier the new trust would face "severe restrictions" on new deals.

But Mr Shaub said the plan would not remove conflicts of interest.

"Every president in modern times has taken the strong medicine of divestiture," he said, referring to a process whereby Mr Trump would sell off his corporate assets and put the profits into a blind trust run by an independent trustee.

At a news conference on Wednesday, lawyer Sherri Dillon said that management of the Trump Organization would be transferred to a trust controlled by Mr Trump's sons Don and Eric and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

The Trump Organization is an umbrella company for Donald Trump's hundreds of investments in real estate, brands and other businesses.

"petty"