Access to Donald Trump, for $500,000: Pitfalls for Presidents’ Families
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Version 0 of 1. The invitation made an extraordinary offer: Donors willing to write a check for $500,000 to $1 million would be granted access to Donald J. Trump the day after he is sworn in as president, along with the opportunity to participate in a multiday hunting or fishing trip with his oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. But on Tuesday, the Trump Organization put out a statement distancing the family from the fund-raiser, saying the event had “not been approved or pursued by the Trump family,” even though legal documents show that Eric Trump served on the board of directors of the recently formed charity behind it, the Opening Day Foundation. The event is still scheduled, but references to the hunting trip have been removed, and Eric Trump said late Tuesday that neither he nor his brother would attend. The abrupt turnabout was the latest example of the ethical thicket the president-elect and his family face as he prepares to take the oath of office. It highlights the need for Mr. Trump to clearly define what roles his adult children will play in his administration, according to former senior White House advisers who have served the last six presidents. “I am seeing insensitivity to what is ahead,” said Michael H. Cardozo, who worked in the White House counsel’s office under President Jimmy Carter. The Carter administration struggled with the activities of the president’s brother, Billy, who had business dealings with Libya while Mr. Carter was in office. In the weeks since Mr. Trump’s election, three of his four adult children, who are serving on his transition committee, have been a near-constant presence. One or more of them have participated in a meeting with the prime minister of Japan, joined in on a phone call with the president of Argentina, and sat at the conference table where Mr. Trump met with leaders of major technology companies. Donald Jr. also played a role in choosing Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the interior. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump has discussed an advisory role in his administration, and Mr. Trump has also mentioned her husband, Jared Kushner, as a possible adviser. Eric and Donald Jr. have said they plan to stay with the family businesses. “I just think you borrow trouble when you put your children in government meetings, whether it is legal or not,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary to President George W. Bush. Peter J. Wallison, who served as White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, added: “Actions the president is going to be taking are already going to be controversial. If there are questions as to why he made a particular decision and how it might impact his family, that is not good. They need to be thinking about this.” The history of trouble from presidential families is long. Billy Carter, Jeb Bush, Roger Clinton and Tony Rodham are just a few of the family members of recent presidents who have generated unwanted headlines, even as White House officials took pains to prevent them. “They have to understand that they are under the microscope, just like their parents,” said Mark K. Updegrove, a presidential historian who has written four books on White House occupants, from George Washington to George W. Bush. “For the children, they run the risk of being made an example of, if they are not careful in how they interact with their families.” For the Trumps, the most recent potential conflict was the creation in Texas this month of the nonprofit Opening Day Foundation — presumably a reference to the first day of the hunting season — which listed Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as members of the board of directors, along with Gentry Beach, a longtime friend of Donald Jr. who helped raise money for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration. An invitation last week urged supporters of Mr. Trump to become “Bald Eagle” donors with a $1 million check or “Grizzly Bear” donors with a $500,000 payment, in exchange for an invitation to a private reception with Mr. Trump the day after his swearing-in, and a chance to go hunting at a later date with his sons. “Opening Day is your opportunity to play a significant role as our family commemorates the inauguration of our father, friend and President Donald J. Trump,” the invitation said. But by Tuesday, a new invitation had been prepared, eliminating the offer for the biggest donors to go hunting with Eric and Donald Jr. and dropping the private reception with their father. A spokesman for Opening Day also said new legal papers would be filed to remove Eric and Donald Jr. as members of the group’s board. “Eric and Don Jr. will support the foundation, but they will not be co-founders of it,” said Mark Brinkerhoff, the spokesman for Opening Day. “Their involvement with the foundation and with the event is purely supportive. They will not be official parties to the Opening Day Foundation.” Eric Trump said in an interview that his name had been on a “draft” that was circulated, and that he had played no role in the creation of the charity. The backtracking on the Opening Day fund-raiser had strong echoes of Ms. Trump’s calling off her own fund-raising effort: an online auction that offered the winning bidder the opportunity to have coffee with her, to benefit the Eric Trump Foundation and a hospital it supports. That auction attracted a number of businessmen who said in interviews with The New York Times that their goal was to pass a message to her father on policy issues like immigration, or to gather information that might affect investments. The auction was canceled on Friday. “Families can be complicated, and big families are even more complicated,” said C. Boyden Gray, who served as White House counsel during the administration of the elder George Bush, the last president to have adult children when he entered the White House. “And the Bush families and the Trump families are both big families. So a little extra care is warranted.” Mr. Trump has said he will reveal in January his plans to prevent conflicts of interest between his presidency and his business enterprise, which has operations in at least 20 countries. A transition official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the family’s primary focus had been on addressing the potential conflicts involving the Trump business. Issues surrounding the charities have been a secondary concern, the official said, but now that two incidents have arisen, the Trumps are turning their attention to them. Under federal law, a president’s children or relations by marriage are prohibited from holding paid positions in federal agencies. The rules surrounding unpaid and advisory appointments, as well as White House jobs, are less clearly established. Mr. Trump ran for president on a promise to “drain the swamp” of special interests in Washington, and on harsh criticism of the Clinton family for the operations of its foundation while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state. The actions of Mr. Trump’s children — their involvement in transition business while they also use their status to raise money — threaten to undermine all of that, and several of Mr. Trump’s own advisers privately expressed concern this week about distractions involving his family. During his 1988 campaign, George Bush was sensitive to the “microscopic probing” his children were facing, particularly as the election drew near. In a letter to them in May 1988, he cautioned about the “new friends” they might encounter, suggesting that the friends would ask for things. “I know I must sound very defensive, but — believe me — every effort will be made to find some phone call, some inquiry, some letter that can be made to appear improper,” he wrote in the letter, obtained from his presidential library. It was addressed to George W. Bush, but appeared to be directed at the whole family. “Soon the election will be at hand, and then you will not have to put up with preachy letters from your father, as in this case, maybe.” Yet concerns about the business dealings of the Bush children persisted well after the election, inviting bad publicity and questions about whether the Bush name had opened doors. Barely a month after his father’s inauguration in 1989, Jeb Bush and a group of business associates went to Nigeria to promote flood and irrigation equipment. As State Department cables documented the lavish receptions hosted by governors and a meeting with the Nigerian president, Mr. Bush was put in a predicament, balancing the dual roles of businessman and diplomat. “Jeb Bush is a very pleasant, polished, and a smooth diplomat,” Princeton N. Lyman, the American ambassador to Nigeria, wrote in a cable at the time. Mr. Bush’s business partners eventually closed a lucrative deal to sell equipment to state governments in Nigeria, and while he denied making any money on the deal, the fallout dogged him for many years. “By definition, every single business transaction I am involved with may give the appearance that I am trading on my name,” Mr. Bush wrote in The Wall Street Journal during his father’s 1992 campaign, referring to questions about the Nigeria deal. “I cannot change who I am.” The encroachment of family continued into Bill Clinton’s administration, where presidential siblings — his half brother, Roger, and Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham — made headlines for business dealings that were called into question. Each of the three lobbied the administration for pardons, leading to a congressional inquiry. The siblings’ proximity to the Clintons’ public work also arose during Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign when Tony Rodham and Roger Clinton were linked to unsuccessful housing deals in Haiti, where the Clintons were helping direct recovery efforts after the 2010 earthquake. “I don’t have a choice of being first brother,” Roger Clinton said last year. “It’s not like I’ve been given the option of doing it and I could turn it down. There are times when it’s hard.” |