If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in November, his personal and family business interests could pose even bigger ethical problems and national security risks than they did during his first term − when he exploited the presidency to financially benefit himself in unprecedented ways, ethics experts warn.
Trump earned up to $160 million in total from businesses in foreign countries while he was in office, according to one recent estimate from the Washington watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). That estimate included income from at least 69 foreign trademarks granted to Trump businesses and 150 foreign officials who visited a Trump business.
Millions of those dollars flowed to the Trump Organization from corrupt and authoritarian governments such as China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, according to a January report from Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
“We have to assume that not only would we see what we saw in the four years of his presidency, but that we’d see it a lot more and probably done a lot more brazenly,” said CREW president Noah Bookbinder.
And given recent court judgments declaring that Trump owes more than $530 million in damages, Bookbinder said, “He’s got a real need for it now.”
