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Donald Trump's plan* to separate business and the presidency; Trump and Rex Tillerson are having a hard time answering questions about Russia.

*LOL.

A business firewall so shoddy even Trump wouldn't put his name on it

At a long-awaited press conference Wednesday, Donald Trump unveiled his similarly long-awaited plan to address the conflicts of interest posed by his business holdings. Suffice to say that if this plan to build a wall between Trump's business and politics were a plan for a border wall, President-elect Trump would not be satisfied. [ Vox / Libby Nelson ]

] Trump is planning to have his sons run the Trump Organization (and says he won't talk to them about it), will stop making new foreign deals, and will appoint an "ethics adviser" to the Trump Organization to approve new domestic deals. [ Politico / Josh Dawsey and Darren Samuelsohn ]

] Instead of selling his hotels or prohibiting foreign diplomats from booking there, meanwhile, Trump is going to donate the proceeds of such visits to the US Treasury — which poses new ethical conflicts by removing even the semblance of a firewall between Trump's money and the US government's money. [ Huffington Post / Christina Wilkie and Paul Blumenthal ]

] (This is just one of many axes on which Trump's business empire could have an impact on his policy preferences.) [ Bloomberg / Michael Keller, Blacki Migliozzi, Caleb Melby, and Mira Rojanasakul ]

] The Office of Government Ethics — which is supposed to help the executive branch avoid conflicts of interest — is extremely underwhelmed. In a speech Wednesday at Brookings, the office's head warned that Trump's plan would increase the risk of corruption in the US government, and all but implied that Trump simply wasn't patriotic enough to suck it up and divest as previous presidents have done. [ Vox / Libby Nelson ]

] But this simply isn't how the Trumps understand conflict of interest. Trump (as well as daughter Ivanka, who announced a "leave of absence" from the Trump Organization and her brand) appears to think the only problem with mixing business and government is that you don't have time for both. [ TPM / Matt Shuham ]

] Peter Thiel offers a more straightforward defense: If you have a conflict of interest, it means you're more informed than someone who doesn't have financial investments operating at potential cross-purposes with your duties as a public official. [ NYT / Maureen Dowd ]

] Ultimately, the best defense Trump can argue is that he's not taking literally every single bribe that comes along. [Slate / Jeremy Stahl]

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Dossier days

The DOJ puts a boot on Volkswagen

The US Department of Justice indicted six current and former Volkswagen employees Wednesday on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and violation of the Clean Air Act. [ WSJ / Aruna Viswanatha, William Boston, and Mike Spector ]

] The indictments stem from Volkswagen's use of deceptive technology to lie about the carbon emissions made by its diesel vehicles, which came to light in 2015. [ Vox / Brad Plumer ]

] It's extremely rare for individual employees to be charged in cases like this. Usually the company just agrees to criminal wrongdoing and pays criminal or civil fines. [ Washington Post / Steven Overly ]

] (Volkswagen did that, too, to the tune of $4.3 billion.) [ Reuters / David Shepardso n]

n] The Volkswagen case might be an outlier because executives reportedly found out about the deceptive technology in early 2015, and decided to lie about it rather than fixing it. Or it could be because five of the six indicted employees live in Germany — so it's unclear whether they'll ever make it to the US for trial. [ WSJ / Ruth Bender ]

] The company itself is already looking forward. It's shifting toward electric cars and away from diesel ones. [ Vox / Brad Plumer ]

] (Arguably, this would have happened much sooner — with the effort that went toward deceptive fuel technology getting channeled more productively — if European tax subsidies didn't continue to incentivize diesel vehicles even after it became clear that they were bad for the environment.) [FT]

Miscellaneous

Verbatim

Watch this: How this guy found 83 messages in bottles

Clint Buffington has found 83 messages in bottles — and you could probably do it too. [YouTube / Zachary Crockett and Phil Edwards]