"Is there a possibility sometime in the next 20 or 30 years we end up in Russia? Absolutely. Is it right for us right now? Probably not,” said Eric Trump in an interview. | Getty Eric Trump: It’s 'probably not' the right time for Trump Org deals in Russia

The Trump Organization will “probably not” pursue business deals in Russia in the next few years, Eric Trump told Argentina’s La Nacion in Uruguay last week.

“For years we’ve looked at deals in Russia and we’ve never become comfortable with any of the deals that we’ve seen. Is there a possibility sometime in the next 20 or 30 years we end up in Russia? Absolutely. Is it right for us right now? Probably not,” said Eric Trump who, with his brother Donald Trump Jr., will take over the business for their father. “We don’t have any business interests in Russia. We don’t spend much time there at all.”

The interview was posted last Friday, the same day the Director of National Intelligence issued a report stating the intelligence community’s conclusion that hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta were directed by the Russian government and aimed to assist Trump’s campaign.

“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” the report stated.

It added: “Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”

Trump’s company has long maintained an interest in Russian business dealings. He signed a one-year agreement in 2005 that opened the door on construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow, though that plan never got off the ground, according to the Washington Post. Donald Jr. was quoted by the trade publication eTurboNews telling a real estate conference in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Potential conflicts of interest involving Trump’s business empire have also swirled since he was elected, and it remains unclear how he will fully address potential conflicts; the president-elect is scheduled to hold a press conference Wednesday in New York to address the controversy.

"The law's totally on my side, the president can't have a conflict of interest,” Trump said in November. "In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly.”

The president-elect has vowed that his company would make “no new deals” while he’s in office. But in a separate interview while in Uruguay, Eric Trump opened the door on additional agreements while he’s in charge of the company in Argentina. “In Buenos Aires we are in the preliminary stage of looking at a project. Nothing was yet finalized or signed. But we’ll find a project, something we can do tremendously well,” he told the Clarin.

Eric Trump said in the La Nacion interview — he was touring a new beachfront Trump condominium there slated to open by late 2018 — that the separation between Trump’s White House and the company will be complete.

“It’s something I take very seriously,” Eric Trump said. “There won’t be conflict of interest because there will be distinct separation of church and state. That’s very important to me. He’s got the largest job in the world. And that’s obviously being commander in chief. And I’ve got a very big job and that’s running a company that I’ve been in for a very long time and those two things will be distinctly separate. I’ll be obviously very curious to watch what he does from a public standpoint but I certainly won’t be talking to him about government and we won’t be sharing business and we’ll take that very seriously.”

But he also seemed to suggest that movement between the business and political realms, at least for him and his brother, is possible.

“The interests of the United States are first and foremost,” he said. “And we’ve been there to support him throughout the whole race and we’ll continue obviously to do so, and if that means sacrifices then you know we’ll deal with the sacrifices. I’m sure there will be some. But that’s okay because we love our country. And we can always when politics ends we can always hop right back in.”



Matthew Nussbaum is a reporter.