Getty Eric Trump: My father has 'zero conflicts of interest'

Eric Trump, one of President Donald Trump’s two sons who have taken over the family’s business, said in an interview that aired Tuesday that he still discusses profit reports and certain other business issues with his father, who has sworn off any involvement in the family’s dealings.

Those discussions are not inappropriate, Eric Trump told ABC’s “Good Morning America,” because the president cannot, by law, have any conflicts of interest.


“We don't talk about the activities. We don't talk about what we're doing in the business. We don't — we just don't mix,” Trump said in the pretaped interview, in which he also told reporter Tom Llamas that he had shared profit reports with the president. “It doesn't blur the lines. You're allowed to show that and remember, the president of the United States has zero conflicts of interest. Zero.”

Donald Trump, perhaps the wealthiest man ever to assume the presidency, arrived at the White House with a complex web of financial and business entanglements, the full breadth of which he and his businesses have been unwilling to fully reveal. The president refused to divest himself entirely from his family’s business empire but has instead entrusted full control of it to his two adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

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The president has managed to avoid divesting himself entirely from his family’s business because the main federal law against conflicts of interest exempts the president. But assertions from Eric Trump and similar ones made by White House officials that the president cannot have a conflict of interest are not entirely accurate, because other ethics laws do apply to him.

