Donald Trump had previously said he would hold a “major news conference” on Dec. 15 to discuss his business dealings. | Getty Trump promises ‘no new deals’ while president, Ivanka won’t manage company Late-night tweets come after postponement of Dec. 15 press conference

Donald Trump is promising to refrain from launching any new business deals during his time in the White House, and the president-elect also said late Monday night he plans to hand over operations of his sprawling company to his two adult sons but not his oldest daughter, Ivanka.

The businessman offered details on the future of his financial empire via Twitter through a series of late night posts. The tweets came just hours after his aides confirmed a delay to his planned Thursday “major news conference” that was being billed as a chance for Trump to explain how he’d disentangle himself from his business arrangements.


Trump aides said the formal rollout would come next month, before he’s sworn in on Jan. 20.

On Twitter, the president-elect said only that he’d hold a news conference “in the near future” to talk about his business plans, as well as his Cabinet appointments “and all other topics of interest.”

“Busy times!” Trump wrote in the message just before midnight Tuesday.

The extra time gives Trump’s team a chance to further navigate his ethics entanglements and also provides his critics with more time to punish him as he struggles to do so.

Trump strategist and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said during an interview on CNN earlier Monday night that the “minor delay” offers the real estate mogul more time to work through an arrangement. Conway said Trump's team will find a solution that protects the incoming president from conflicts of interest as he transitions from running a sprawling business organization to running the federal government.

The president-elect, his family and their lawyers have been working since November’s election to sort through a complex set of legal mandates, tax questions and ethical constraints. Their goal is to allow Trump to maintain a stake in the company he’s built over more than four decades while turning over operational responsibilities to his adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.

“As we know, it’s a very unconventional situation,” Conway told CNN. “Normally we have politicians moving from political job to political job. In this case, we have a very successful businessman, who’s brilliant and a billionaire, who has assets and holdings all over the globe, and that needs to have a transfer of power through the proper channels.”

But Trump retaining any stake in his company, given its global operations, promises to be controversial. Trump sought on Twitter to tamp down one of many conflict concerns he’s facing by writing that “no new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.”

In that same message, Trump also acknowledged only Donald Jr. and Eric would be charged with managing his company. He notably left out any mention of his daughter Ivanka, whose husband, Jared Kushner, is seen as one of his closest advisers and is considering a move to Washington D.C.

The new Trump business arrangement is a work in progress, so it is uncertain how it will be ultimately fashioned. Republicans say the Trump team will keep brainstorming on possible fixes. “This is one of these situations where it’s so complicated and it’s so big that people keep thinking of things,” said a well-placed GOP source tracking the issue. “I don’t think there’s an easy answer, but there may be a simple elegant idea not thought of yet.”

The delay also gives Democrats and other Trump critics another opportunity to accuse the president-elect of attempting to use public office for personal enrichment. They argue those conflicts of interest are unavoidable unless Trump takes significant steps to distance himself from his own assets, and they’ve criticized Trump relentlessly for his resistance to setting up their preferred anti-corruption safeguards.

“Donald Trump is a corrupt liar,” American Bridge President Jessica Mackler said in a statement. “And after pledging to eliminate his ability to profit off the presidency, he's now refusing to even talk about it. Trump knows his only option is to totally divest, but he can't bring himself to do it because he wants to profit off the presidency.”

Trump doesn’t appear headed toward a complete sell-off of his businesses, despite the pleadings from Democrats and some Republicans who say he should follow recent presidential practice by putting his assets into a “true blind trust” run by an independent trustee with no ties to him or his family.

In Trump’s public remarks and recent tweets, he’s indicated no interest in taking such an approach. In an interview Sunday with Fox News, Trump again stated that he plans to maintain ownership of his company while his executives and children take over the day-to-day operations. “Well, essentially, I’m not going to have anything to do with the management,” Trump said.

Trump insisted in the interview that the plan he was mapping out was designed to avoid conflicts of interest, and he tried to make his case by citing a potentially lucrative business opportunity presented to him last week that he decided against pursuing.

“I am turning down billions of dollars of deals,” Trump said, citing an unspecified offer involving, “seven deals with one big player, great player, last week, because I thought it could be perceived as a conflict of interest.”

Many of Trump’s leading surrogates have also knocked down the notion that he needs to sell his business outright.

“You can’t take Trump as a name and a $10 billion system and hide it. It’s just stupid,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an early Republican backer of the president-elect, said in an interview. He’s urging Trump to turn over his company to his children while setting up an independent panel of three to five people who review its books monthly “and make sure in no way it’s being used to the advantage of Trump.”

On CNN on Monday, Conway called the change in schedule for the announcement a “minor delay” that accounts for the upcoming holidays and the need to keep working out a solution. “There’s no reason to rush that if the procedures are not ready,” she said. “The same questions that will be asked and the same answers that will be provided will just be delayed for a few weeks.”

Asked by anchor Anderson Cooper whether Trump’s delay signals any intention of changing course from the plan for the president-elect to keep hold of the ownership of his company, Conway replied, “At the moment, it does not. What it does is make more clear how convoluted and complex you know many of these business holdings are.”

“Everybody wants to make sure they get it right,” she added. “And to get it right, you have to get proper legal counsel, accountants, lawyers, obviously other corporate officers involved, and his expectation remains that he will cede operational control of the Trump Organization to his adult children and other corporate officers whom he trusts and have worked for him for many years so that he can focus 100 percent of his time and attention to being president of the United States.”

During his transition, Trump has been less than absolute on many of the issues involving his business — and the potential domestic and international conflicts they bring.

His company is still pursuing litigation that would expose Trump to depositions, document discovery and other steps that could embarrass a sitting president. He also signaled last week that he’ll keep drawing a salary and maintain the executive producer credit line on the NBC reality show “Celebrity Apprentice,” which he previously hosted, helping make him a household name with a new generation of Americans.

But on other occasions, Trump has shown he wants to avoid crossfire on matters stemming from his pre-political career. Last month, he agreed to settlements totaling $25 million in three lawsuits alleging fraud at his Trump University real estate seminars. Then last week, his transition team said Trump had, back in June, sold his entire stock portfolio, with an estimated worth of at least $22 million. Transition aides did not provide any documentation to explain or confirm the transactions.

Politically, Trump appears to have some room to maneuver as he tries to sort out his business dealings. Republican leaders have said they’ll give Trump the benefit of the doubt that he will be governing in the country’s interest, as opposed to his own financial ones. On CNBC last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump’s business interests were “not what I’m concerned about in Congress.”

That’s a view other senior GOP lawmakers have expressed to POLITICO too.

“He’s not a defense contractor, he’s not dealing with NASA, he’s not dealing with the Justice Department, he’s not dealing in health care,” said Alabama GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee. “He’s in the hotel and entertainment business. I think there’d be minimal conflicts, if any.”

“The only obligation he has is that under the law,” explained Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican and chairman the committee charged with government oversight, including Trump administration, in the next Congress. “There are public perceptions that I’m sure they’re keenly aware of.”

The Trump Organization and the president-elect’s adult children have maintained an active presence since the election waving the name of the next president, hawking the family’s wines for the holidays, auctioning off a private coffee with Ivanka for charity and celebrating the No. 1 ranking of their Scottish links golf course with a “Trump Wins Again!” tweet.

Since winning the White House, however, the Trump name also has new strings attached to it, including questions about how to handle security around the world on Trump-linked properties that could become inviting terrorism targets.

“If something happens on a Trump building outside the U.S. and people get hurt, that’d make Benghazi look like nothing,” warned Richard Painter, a former top ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House.

Painter last Friday also joined more than a dozen public interest groups and several former GOP elected officials in a letter to Trump pleading with the president-elect to go beyond just handing organizational control of his business over to his children.

“By combining your presidency with your family business, you will create ongoing conflicts of interest and credibility problems for your presidency,” wrote the group, which includes the Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen and former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

Norm Eisen, former top ethics lawyer in Barack Obama’s White House, said in a statement Monday that by delaying his announcement this week, Trump is sending a “positive sign” that he still could sell off his company and move the assets into a blind trust. “Let's hope he takes the additional time to do the right thing,” he said.

Elana Schor contributed to this report.