Just four weeks after Donald Trump stood beside a table stacked high with papers trumpeting his plan to separate himself from his business empire, the president and his family and advisers have not made much effort to truly split their business activities and their official duties.

His Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago doubled its initiation fee, while Sean Spicer, his press secretary, has labeled it "the Winter White House." The CEO of his hotels business pondered a threefold expansion. Foreign dignitaries are flocking to his Washington hotel. He urged British officials to scuttle a wind farm that would obstruct the view from his golf course. Lawyers for first lady Melania Trump claimed in a New York State libel suit that a Daily Mail article about her cost her the chance “to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multimillion-dollar business relationships."


Then, on Thursday, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, standing in front of the White House seal for a Fox News interview, told people to buy from first daughter Ivanka Trump’s fashion line after Nordstrom yanked the products from their stores.

Ethics lawyers called it a clear violation of the executive branch’s regulation against officials’ endorsing companies and products.

"You can't do that," said Richard Painter, a chief ethics official in the Bush White House. "You just can't do that." Even Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican and head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it was "wrong, wrong, wrong,” "unacceptable," and "clearly over the line."

But there’s little official recourse since the White House essentially self-polices on such ethics issues. And Conway is unlikely to face reprimand from a boss who clearly approves. It was Trump himself, after all, who touched off the controversy, when he took to Twitter on Wednesday to attack Nordstrom, saying his daughter had been “treated so unfairly” by the company and that its decision was “terrible!"

"What the president did, that was even worse," Painter said. "You can't send a tweet from your official account criticizing a company. It is just another ethical problem with his presidency."

Spicer said during the daily briefing that Conway was being "counseled" but declined to say what that meant. A source familiar with the matter said Trump is fully backing Conway and does not agree with the “counseled” remark. This person said the president found it unfair "because it sounds like she has been reprimanded or needs counseling."

There appeared to be evidence of public outrage. The Office of Government Ethics, which regulates the executive branch, saw its website go down, and while the agency was cryptic about the reason, it seemed related to Conway’s blatant plug.

"OGE’s website, phone system and email system are receiving an extraordinary volume of contacts from citizens about recent events," the agency said on Twitter. It added the agency doesn't have "investigative or enforcement authority" and can only ask the relevant federal agency to take action.

Trump staked much of his presidential campaign on the idea that he was a wildly successful business man who would bring his executive savvy to the Oval Office. He has also talked up how he could simultaneously run his business and the country “perfectly” and only reluctantly put his businesses and assets into a trust that is not a blind one.

But ethics and governance experts have vigorously encouraged him to cleanly sever his business ties — something he is still refusing to do.

“All of this emanates from the problem with Donald J. Trump, the president, who simply rejects the notion that he can’t effectively have his business enterprises and be president at same time,” said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The conflicts of interest between the president and Trump enterprises has no precedent in American history.”

The president’s personal buy-in to the blurring of business and politics also separates the Trumps’ profiteering from past examples of entrepreneurial presidential relatives. Billy Carter and Roger Clinton frequently embarrassed their brothers with their bids to capitalize on White House fame.

But their antics were White House headaches. Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, by contrast, is a cause celebre.

White House spokeswoman Kelly Love and ethics counsel Stefan Passantino didn’t answer requests for comment. Neither did an aide to Sheri Dillon, Trump’s lawyer at Morgan Lewis who developed his conflicts-of-interest measures.

Ivanka Trump isn’t the only offspring whose business endeavors are creating controversy. People familiar with the matter say the two sons, Eric and Don Jr., actively want to grow the family's business and are "exploring new opportunities," one person said. Trump handed off management of the Trump Organization’s day-to-day operations to the two of them.

"Eric, in particular, has taken a very aggressive position," this person said.

The two sons have also taken little care to steer clear of the White House. They both showed up for Trump’s announcement of Judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, and chatted with senators and Trump aides before heading back to New York. Adding to the optics problem, The Washington Post recently reported that a business trip for the organization cost almost $100,000 to protect.

But much of the recent attention has been on Ivanka Trump, who has so far taken no formal role in the White House, but whose husband, Jared Kushner, is a top adviser to the president. On the same day of Trump’s news conference, Jan. 11, Ivanka Trump posted on Facebook that she would take a leave of absence from her father’s real estate company and her own apparel and accessories brand.

“I will no longer be involved with the management or operations of either company,” she said.

Yet she was personally upset with the Nordstrom decision, one person familiar with her thinking said, and was in the White House this week. Spicer’s defense on Wednesday of Trump’s tweet against Nordstrom shows how the line between business and politics will blur as long as she still owns the company and it uses her name.

“She's not directly running the company, it's still her name on it and there's clearly efforts to undermine that name,” Spicer said. “There is clearly an attempt for him to stand up for her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies.”

Nordstrom's phone lines have been flooded with Trump supporters and people who support the company's decision. Officials at the company say the whole situation is puzzling and their decision had nothing to do with Trump's presidency.

People close to Ivanka Trump say there is no way for her to fully divest from her branded products business because she owns it all herself and would have to shut down her company to eliminate any perceptions of conflicts. And they say she cannot do that because of existing multi-year contracts with various retail outlets and other partners.

Ivanka Trump isn’t subject to ethics rules because she isn’t a government employee, but her husband is, and her active, informal role in her father’s White House raises questions about whether she is appropriately managing conflicts.

Defenders say that Ivanka Trump would never discuss anything related to her personal businesses with the various CEOs who attend White House meetings or private dinners with her. This includes Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon who attended a recent dinner. Wal-Mart carries Ivanka Trump products.

Some on Wall Street have also speculated about potential conflicts given all the financial executives who attend meetings with the first daughter. The list of finance executives who have attended meetings with her include investment banker Adebayo Ogunlesi, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

Critics say this could raise the possibility of financiers providing favorable credit terms to Ivanka Trump for her various business endeavors. But people close to Trump say she has no lenders to her businesses and no debt. “She doesn’t owe anyone anything,” one person close to Trump said.

A Trump Organization spokeswoman said, "On Jan. 18, 2017, Ivanka Trump resigned from all positions of management and authority with The Trump Organization and its affiliates. We are taking steps to update records in the various states and other jurisdictions consistent with governing law.”

However, Ivanka Trump’s enterprises are still expanding: An announcement for the new Trump hotel in Vancouver included "The Spa by Ivanka Trump (TM)."

For now, though, much of the heat is on Conway. Her remark drew complaints from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member, Elijah Cummings, and watchdog groups including Public Citizen and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“Anyone harboring illusions that there was some separation between the Trump administration and the Trump family businesses has had their fantasy shattered,” Public Citizen president Robert Weissman said in a statement. “Kellyanne Conway’s self-proclaimed advertisement for the Ivanka Trump fashion line demonstrates again what anyone with common sense already knew: President Trump and the Trump administration will use the government apparatus to advance the interests of the family businesses.”

Some ethics experts were alarmed that it doesn’t appear there will be any significant consequences for Conway.

“In a sane, functioning universe, the White House counsel would address this him- or herself, but clearly that’s not going to happen,” said Andrew Herman, a government ethics lawyer at the firm Miller & Chevalier. “OGE can’t compel the president to mete out punishment.”

With Trump himself exempt from the main federal conflicts-of-interest law, the episode underscores how legal means are ill-suited to changing his behavior, according to Jan Baran, a Republican ethics lawyer at the firm Wiley Rein.

“There’s always this tendency to tout his behavior in legal terms and it doesn’t work that way,” Baran said. “He is subjecting himself to certain criticisms. And whether that criticism is going to hurt him politically remains to be seen.”

Kyle Cheney and Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

