Latest news with #selfdealing
The Independent
25-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Vietnam bypassing its own laws to fast-track $1.5bn Trump golf resort amid tariffs threat, report says
Donald Trump 's family business is breaking ground on an accelerated project in Vietnam as the country's government seeks an updated trade agreement with the United States. The U.S. president's tariff threats have driven Vietnam to seek a new arrangement with America, potentially including efforts to combat trade fraud, as the White House inches closer to a July deadline when Trump's so-called 'reciprocal' tariff measures will snap back into place. He previously ordered a 90-day pause of his order imposing sky-high tariff rates on many countries, including Vietnam, which is set to face a 46 percent tariff on all exports to the United States on top of the Trump administration's 10 percent across-the-board import measures. Now, The New York Times reports that a $1.5 billion Trump Organization development project outside of Hanoi has seemingly blown through the typical approval process, leaving locals enraged at the government and the president adding another layer to the onion of alleged self-dealing and kickbacks that has defined all four years and four months of Trump's presidential tenure. According to documents published by the Times on the Trump Organization 's Hanoi development, the project skipped typical environmental reviews and cut short a local public comment period — one that had been dotted by fired-up local residents who've been informed that their land will be sold for less than half the value of what the parcels would have been worth prior to the alleged land grab. The area set to be developed for the project includes farms and nearly four square miles of riverbank property, all together totaling 'hundreds' of residences. One local, Le Van Truong, 54, was quoted by The New York Times as saying he could lose farmland as well as the local cemetery holding five generations of his ancestors. 'Trump says it's separate — the presidency and his business. But he has the power to do whatever he wants,' he said. Wednesday's groundbreaking for the project took place just three months after the initial documents were filed, a process which experts told the Times usually takes at least two years. Some steps were reportedly skipped entirely, while others were still underway. But even as the project reportedly endangers the livelihoods and homes of hundreds of people, experts in Vietnamese law who spoke to the newspaper said that the project was blowing through the typical process for approval and safe development at an alarming rate of speed. In one anecdote, the paper even noted that 'the province is dotted with unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War' and saw a 200-pound bomb recovered recently. And the cause seems to be apparent: one letter published by the Times states, according to a translation, that the project was 'receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally.' White House officials continue to deny this. At a press conference this past week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the president placed his businesses in a blind trust upon taking office in 2017, where they remain, controlled by his family including his adult children, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. The press secretary also repeated an insistence common among Trump officials: that the president is too personally wealthy and patriotic to take advantage of such an obvious financial opportunity. In an emailed statement to the Times regarding the Vietnam project, a White House spokesperson said: 'All of the president's trade discussions are totally unrelated to the Trump Organization.' The White House also insisted there was no conflict of interest because the president's sons run the business. Yet the second Trump administration has brazenly defied ethical standards, in reality. Trump last week hosted purchasers of his 'memecoin' — a 'digital currency' which critics say seems to serve no other purpose beyond trading, either for private financial gain or, in the case of those who visited the president's Bedminster property for a depressing-looking meal on Thursday, to funnel money to the Trump family's pockets in exchange for direct access to the president. Some attendees told reporters after the event that they attended with the explicit hopes of appealing to the president about specific issues. The Trump Organization's Vietnam development is set to feature a riverside resort with golf courses and private villas for guests. It's valued at around $1.5 billion and estimated to be completed in two years. Erasing all doubt about the project's ties to official relations between the U.S. government and his own, Vietnam's prime minister Pham Minh Chinh said at the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday that the project would 'receive maximum support' to 'further strengthen the relationship between Vietnam and the U.S.'
Washington Post
16-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
For years, Trump criticized politicians for enriching themselves. Now he wants a plane from Qatar.
Politics Trump used to slam self-dealing. Now he wants a plane. May 16, 2025 | 5:59 PM GMT President Donald Trump and his sons have conducted foreign business dealings worth billions in Trump's second term, after previously slamming opponents for self-dealing.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
As Trump Courts Gifts and Dangles Access, Congress Sits on the Sidelines
The president stood accused of dangling exclusive access to the White House for big bucks. Members of Congress were duly outraged, with one prominent Republican assailing him for using 'probably one of the more sacrosanct places in America' to rake in cash. Months of high-profile congressional hearings ensued. That was in 1997, when President Bill Clinton came under scrutiny for inviting campaign donors to stay overnight in the White House's famed Lincoln Bedroom, prompting a firestorm around claims that he was shamelessly exploiting the presidency. Nearly three decades later, President Trump has drawn accusations of corruption and self-dealing for publicly flirting with accepting a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar and promising an exclusive country club dinner and White House tour for the largest buyers of his crypto coin, one of many financial exploits enriching him and his family. But the Republicans who control Congress aren't rushing to convene investigative committees just yet. As is often the case when Mr. Trump's actions or words put him squarely in the middle of a controversy, top G.O.P. lawmakers are in no hurry to question the president or amplify the criticism. 'This is a hypothetical,' the Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, said on Tuesday when asked if he was comfortable with the gifting of the jet. Should the matter move beyond the hypothetical stage, he said, 'I can assure you there will be plenty of scrutiny of whatever that arrangement might look like.' To those who were caught up years ago in the frenzy over the Lincoln Bedroom, the acceptance of Mr. Trump's activities within his own party is discouraging to say the least. 'Where is the hue and cry?' Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton friend and leading fund-raiser for his presidential campaigns who later became governor of Virginia, asked about Mr. Trump. 'It is just astounding to me the double standard that goes on.' At the moment, most of the criticism is coming from Democrats, such as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, who said on Tuesday that he would block all Justice Department political nominees until Mr. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi answered questions about the jet. His move could slow the consideration of dozens of top department officials, as well as federal prosecutors and marshals. Mr. Schumer called Mr. Trump's suggestion that he would accept the plane 'so corrupt that even Putin would give a double take,' referring to the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin. 'And how are Republicans responding?' he asked. 'With silence.' There has been some noise, though, from members of the G.O.P. expressing unease about the arrangement. 'If Qatar gives a plane to the president of the United States, it seems to me that raises questions of whether the administration would be in compliance with the gift law,' said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, one of the few current senators who also served at the time of the Clinton fund-raising hearings, and one of the few in her party who dares to challenge Mr. Trump. In an interview on Fox News, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said he did not 'think it's a good idea' to accept the plane, adding that there was an 'appearance of impropriety.' Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, raised national security concerns about the Qatari jet, noting the gulf nation's backing of Hamas and Hezbollah. 'I also think the plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems,' he told CNBC. 'So we'll see how this issue plays out — but I certainly have concerns.' Even some of Mr. Trump's most ardent conservative allies in the MAGA world, such as the far-right activist Laura Loomer and the podcaster Ben Shapiro, have said Mr. Trump should reconsider the gift given the donor country's record on human rights. Other Republicans eagerly sided with Mr. Trump, who said earlier that it would be stupid to refuse such a gift considering it would potentially save American taxpayers money. 'I'm all for it,' said Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama. 'If they offer him a plane — the ones we got, it costs a fortune to keep going.' Gifts and efforts to cash in on the White House have long been a touchy subject, and lesser instances have led to serious repercussions. In a famous 1958 episode, Sherman Adams, chief of staff to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was forced to resign after the revelation that he had accepted a vicuña overcoat and expensive rug from a New England friend with business interests before federal agencies. Mr. Eisenhower was reluctant to let him go, but go he did. 'As a result of this entire incident, all of us in America should have been made aware of one truth: this is that a gift is not necessarily a bribe,' Mr. Eisenhower told reporters. The Clinton fund-raising investigation was prompted by revelations that some of Mr. Clinton's significant donors had been treated to overnight stays in the revered Lincoln Bedroom and had been invited to White House coffees and golf outings. The revelations led to demands for a special counsel, though Attorney General Janet Reno refused to appoint one. Mr. Clinton insisted he had done nothing wrong and said that while the overnight guests may have been high-powered contributors who gave millions of dollars to his campaigns, they were also his friends. 'I did not have any strangers here,' Mr. Clinton said at a February 1997 White House news conference. 'The Lincoln Bedroom was never sold. That was one more false story we have had to endure, and the facts will show what the truth is.' Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and later presidential candidate who was a leading proponent of tighter campaign finance rules, said that nonetheless he was disappointed in the president. 'The president of the United States, in seeking to raise money for his re-election, was willing to use the Lincoln Bedroom, probably one of the more sacrosanct places in America, in order to gain those financial funds which he felt were necessary,' Mr. McCain said. Republicans who controlled the Senate convened months of hearings by the Governmental Affairs Committee, which in the end produced dueling Republican and Democratic findings that fund-raising activities pursued by both parties were ethically questionable, though not illegal. That report, and one by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, did help spur approval of Mr. McCain's campaign finance overhaul about four years later. Mr. McAuliffe noted that for all the claims and insinuations that swirled around the Lincoln Bedroom matter, there was never a hint that Mr. Clinton was trying to personally profit during his White House years. By contrast, Mr. Trump's conduct has drawn allegations of corruption since even before he began his first term, when he refused to divest from his vast business holdings when he assumed the presidency. His recent activities, including the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin that allows investors around the world to enrich him and his family, have gone much further. 'Nobody said that the Clintons in the White House enriched themselves,' Mr. McAuliffe said. 'He left office broke, broke, broke.'
