President Donald Trump's huddling with staaides and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the middle of the Mar-a-Lago terrace during a foreign policy crisis last weekend – turning it into what one report termed an "al fresco situation room" – sparked a wave of security-related outrage. The hue and cry was sufficiently serious that even the suddenly investigation-averse chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee started making inquiries.

But the incident also solidified Mar-a-Lago, the "Winter White House," as an elite private club whose perks now not only include regular face time with the president and foreign leaders but also the possibility of having a front row seat to history – for those who can afford to pay.

Of course, Trump made a big show late in his transition of unveiling a trust meant to separate him from his business interests. It was widely dismissed as farcical – a conclusion confirmed by subsequent disclosures that the trust is for his "exclusive benefit," that he'll receive reports on its profits or loss and that he can revoke it at any time. It does nothing to dispel the multiple conflicts of interest inherent in his owning a large business based on himself as a brand.

One of Trump's supposed attractive qualities as a candidate was the prospect that he would run the federal government more like a business; and four weeks into his term he seems to be doing so, but with a twist. He's running the government like it's a subsidiary of a very specific business, the Trump Organization – the family business from which he has refused to divest. Here are four ways Trump and his family stand to gain financially from his term in office and the blossoming cluster of scandals surrounding them.

Mar-a-Lago. Talk about shaking up the way Washington does business. Once donors would buy face-time with the president by making big contributions to his political party or campaign committee. Trump's cut out the middle man; now the price of access is a $200,000 Mar-a-Lago membership fee and $14,000 in annual dues. For that, as CNN reported this week, "paying members ... now view dinner at the club as an opportunity for a few seconds of face time" with Trump. Kevin Lane Keller, a professor of marketing at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, says it's the modern day equivalent of "George Washington slept here." He adds: "You would expect [Mar-a-Lago] would benefit from that, being seen as the Winter White House." Indeed: That $200,000 is a sum doubled from $100,000 after Trump won the election. (It's worth noting too that Trump's Turnberry golf club in Scotland raised its annual fee by 38 percent in the wake of his election.)

It's hard to overstate what a departure this whole set-up is. U.S. News' Kenneth T. Walsh, who wrote a book on presidential retreats, says that, "I can't recall anything like what Trump is doing." Indeed, other presidents have had vacation homes – George W. Bush's staff dubbed his Texas ranch the "Western White House," for example – but they've all been private residences. No president has formally monetized his escapes from the White House in this manner. "Never seen it before," says Richard Painter, who was Bush's ethics lawyer. "Never seen any senior U.S. government official do it that way. ... That's official United States government business [occurring in a place] where people are paying for rooms, paid memberships." He added: "It's pay to play."

Serious question: How many foreign governments are now putting resources into either placing or acquiring intelligence assets in Mar-a-Lago? It's a whole new dimension of pay to play.

Domestic (business) policy. Closer to his weekday home, Trump last year opened a new hotel in Washington, D.C. which has quickly become the focus of a whole other set of ethical issues. Within weeks of Trump's election, the Trump International Hotel was hosting roughly 100 foreign diplomats and pitching them on the virtues of using the incoming president's new hotel. "Why wouldn't I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, 'I love your new hotel!' Isn't it rude to come to his city and say, 'I am staying at your competitor?'" one Asian envoy told The Washington Post. There's a lot to unpack here: There's the fact of the foreign officials feeling a natural pressure to spend money on the president's personal businesses; and part and parcel of that is the idea that foreign officials, or for that matter domestic ones with business in front of the U.S. government, being in a position to line the president's pockets.

The foreign officials paying money to Trump-owned businesses specifically raises a constitutional issue. Many ethics and legal experts argue that it violates the "emoluments clause" in the Constitution that bars federal office-holders from receiving "any present, Emolument, Office or Title ... from any King, Prince or foreign state." Politico has documented at least one case of a foreign government footing the bill at Trump's D.C. hotel, Saudi Arabia having put a group of veterans up there for a lobbying trip to the nation's capitol. And a group of ethics and constitutional experts, including Painter, has sued, arguing that Trump is violating the emoluments clause.

There are other issues with the D.C. hotel: It is housed in the federally-owned Old Post Office Pavilion, for example and the lease Trump signed with the General Services Administration in 2013 to rent the property has a clause barring an "elected official" from deriving "any benefit" from it. Now Trump is both tenant and, ultimately, landlord and has appointed his own interim director to the General Services Administration, the agency negotiating with Trump's lawyers how to handle the "benefit" clause.

Farther afield from Washington, the Trump Organization is capitalizing on its brand's newfound prominence with plans to triple the eight Trump hotels around the country. "There are 26 major metropolitan areas in the U.S., and we're in five," Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger said last month. "I don't see any reason that we couldn't be in all of them eventually." In addition the company is going to start a line of mid-tier Scion hotels in smaller cities.

Generally speaking, Trump's hotel business model involves branding and management agreements rather than the actual ownership, building and/or renovation. "The investors will own the hotel," says Painter. "The hotel will be a cash cow for the president of the United States. … All of those investors – we have no idea who those people are going to be."

And as The New York Times' Eric Lipton and Susanne Craig wrote earlier this week, Trump's business operations are "in a position to get tax breaks and other business inducements from state and local officials. While such incentives are hardly unusual for growing businesses, with this family business they will unavoidably raise questions of whether different players involved might be seeking special White House favors." Or, for that matter, avoiding presidential ire: Which governor or mayor wants to invite a petulant tweet or other disfavor because they were insufficiently nice to the president's business interestes? "If you want to be in good with Trump do business with Trump, Inc.," says Painter. "You get access to the president, he likes you. Take business away from Trump, Inc. and you get blasted on Twitter."

Foreign (business) policy. That calculus certainly doesn’t look lost on foreign leaders. In the wake of his election, for example, Trump scored a surprise win in a decade-long fight to trademark his name in China. “The abrupt turn in Trump's bureaucratic fortunes ... has raised questions about the extent to which his political status may be helping his family business,” the Associated Press’ Erika Kinetz reported this week, noting that if Trump had indeed received special treatment from the Chinese government that too might qualify as a violation of the emoluments clause. Indeed any Trump business dealings with foreign governments open up that possibility.

And as Kinetz noted, “This may well be the first foreign trademark to be handed to Trump during his presidency, but is unlikely to be the last. In China alone he has 49 pending trademark applications and 77 marks already registered in his own name, most of which will come up for renewal during his term.” That’s a lot of bargaining chips.

And the timing is potentially illuminating: The victory was reported within days of his election and then finalized and made official less than a week after Trump announced his support for the traditional U.S. “One China” policy which officially recognizes only the People’s Republic of China and not Taiwan – a reversal from his earlier suggestion that the policy could be a bargaining chip for some sort of deal with Beijing.

Maybe this was all totally coincidental. But it demonstrates the problems of perception and reality that the president having a sprawling global business operation presents. Or take Trump's controversial travel ban, which was widely noted to have omitted countries that had both terrorism connections and also Trump businesses. Maybe that was totally coincidental too but both instances raise the kind of legitimate questions that can dog almost any foreign policy decision Trump makes.

Meanwhile, despite what someone watching the January announcement of Trump's trust arrangement may have been led to believe, Trump global operations continue to grow. Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon said at that time that Trump had ordered "all pending deals be terminated" and that "no new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump's presidency" (emphasis mine). Walter Shaub, who heads the Office of Government Ethics, pointed out to The New York Times that "the notion that there won't be new deals doesn't solve the problem of all existing deals and businesses."

But beyond that, Trump Inc. has taken a fairly loose interpretation of the ideas of pending and new deals. So, for example, earlier this month Eric Trump, the president's son, visited the Dominican Republic to revive what the Associated Press called a "long-dormant licensing deal involving a beachfront luxury resort" there. How dormant? Trump Organization General Counsel Alan "Garten said the deal ... was never dead even though nothing new has been built or announced in a decade." It was never dead – just resting or perhaps pining for the fjords.

Similarly, the Trump International Golf Course Scotland announced a multimillion dollar expansion which is definitely, definitely not a new or pending deal because it's just building on something that's already there. Never mind that it will still be new construction, with everything that goes along with it in terms of financing, permitting and interactions with the local government, businesses and lenders.

Trump Inc. is thriving around the globe and every profit center and project represents a leverage point – a place to potentially curry favor with or apply pressure to the most powerful man in the world by way of his bank account.

Gilding the bully pulpit. Then there are the less formal ways that Trump and his family can and have mixed government with personal business. The highest profile recent example of course is Trump's Twitter tantrum against Nordstrom when it dropped his daughter Ivanka's line of clothing – a paroxysm that was retweeted from the official presidential @potus Twitter account. That controversy led Kellyanne Conway, the president's counselor, to hawk the first daughter's goods on Fox News, prompting the Office of Government Ethics to call upon Trump to discipline her for what appeared to be "a clear violation of the prohibition against misuse of position."

This wasn't the first time Ivanka Trump was involved in such scandals; her company flogged a $10,800 bracelet she wore on a post-election "60 Minutes" interview. And later her father invited her to sit in on a transition meeting with the prime minister of Japan – at a time when she was finalizing a business deal in that country.

And neither has Trump shied away from mixing his personal and governmental businesses. In another transition meeting he encouraged a British politician to take up his cause fighting an offshore wind farm that he feels tarnishes the view at the Trump International course in Scotland.

Perhaps the most blatant admission from the Trumps of seeing the presidency as the ultimate ATM came from a lawsuit that Melania Trump filed against a British newspaper for marring her brand. "Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world," the lawsuit claimed. Some people see the White House as an honored place of public service; others see it as a launching pad for harvesting millions of dollars from multiple product categories.