Fredreka Schouten

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said he will transfer his sprawling real-estate and branding empire to his sons and executives and is pledging “no new deals” during his presidency, as he works to quell concerns about conflicts between his business interests and his presidency.

But his plans, announced in a series of late-night tweets Monday, drew immediate criticism from ethics watchdogs, who are pressuring Trump to sever his ownership ties with the Trump Organization and place his assets in a blind trust run by an independent administrator.

“He’s taking baby steps in the right direction,” Norm Eisen, who served as President Obama’s ethics lawyer, said of Trump’s pledge not to embark on new business deals. “But he needs to make a giant step.”

“By hanging on to the interest and letting his sons manage it, he’s flying in the face of what every president has done in the last 40 years,” Eisen said in a telephone interview Tuesday morning. “It will only be a matter of time before we have our first major scandal.”

Trump postpones decision on business dealings

Trump said he would leave his business before his Jan. 20 inauguration to focus “full time on the presidency” and allow his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and corporate executives to oversee the enterprise.

“I will hold a press conference in the near future to discuss the business, Cabinet picks and all other topics of interest,” he added in another tweet. “Busy times!”

Trump had planned a Thursday news conference — his first since winning the presidency Nov. 8 — to discuss his future plans for the business. But transition officials announced its postponement Monday evening, saying Trump’s work to fill his Cabinet has proved time-consuming.

Trump’s wealth, spread among a tangle of more than 500 closely held corporations, represent new territory for an American president. He has business partnerships around the globe, from Turkey to the Philippines.

Watchdog groups said they want more detail on Trump's pledge that his company would not engage in new deal-making during his time in the Oval Office.

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Meredith McGehee of the non-profit group Issue One said leaving the business in his sons' hands "draws a roadmap on how to curry favor" with the president. "This is the way business is done in lots of parts of the world," she said. "If you can't give to the boss man, give to his family."

Federal law does not require Trump to divest his holdings or to sever his ties to his businesses, and the president is not subject to conflict-of-interest rules that govern his Cabinet and other members of the executive branch. But his corporate interests could pose political problems for him and his incoming administration.

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"Because he's not required by law to sell anything, he seems to be leaving it up to the American people to decide whether his business dealings create conflicts in the governing process," said Kenneth Gross, a veteran Washington ethics lawyer who helped another billionaire politician, Michael Bloomberg, navigate his business interests when he became New York City mayor.

Bloomberg, who was subject to New York's ethics rules, retained ownership of his financial information company, Bloomberg LP, but he stepped away from the day-to-day running of the company.

Jan Baran, an ethics lawyer who represents Republicans, said Trump is taking logical steps to reduce potential conflicts and to satisfy voters' interest in seeing him concentrate on the presidency. If Trump's family and executives plan no expansion of his business empire and no new contracts, "it eliminates the opportunity for improper ingratiation by special interests," Baran said.

Selling his companies outright, as some watchdogs have advocated, could open Trump to other ethical questions, Baran added, including whether the buyer has paid fair-market value for Trump's assets or improperly sweetened the deal in a bid to influence the president-elect.

Most recent presidents, starting with Lyndon Johnson, have put their assets in a blind trust. Obama’s assets are in Treasury bonds and mutual funds.