Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

Shortly before President Trump's inauguration, one of his lawyers, Sheri Dillon, stood inside Trump Tower with the soon-to-be commander-in-chief and revealed his plans to maintain his business interests while insulating his presidency from foreign influence. "President-elect Trump has decided, and we are announcing today," the lawyer said, "that he is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury. This way, it is the American people who will profit."

Left unsaid: The Trump Organization makes more money from the Chinese bank alone than it ever could expect from hotel visits by members of a foreign government. And the president has made no pledge to hand over that money. Or the incoming rent from the state-owned Bank of India, which leases space in San Francisco, part of a deal that expires in 2019.

The point of anticorruption laws is to prevent the possibility of outside influence, so that no one has to wonder, after the fact, whether it happened. Yet one of the country's primary conflict-of-interest laws doesn't apply to the president. By holding on to his assets, Trump has chosen to test whether the Emoluments Clause follows suit (he got one case dismissed in January; two others are active). So the president remains in business with the world's two most populous countries. Even if he tries to avoid a bias, there's a clear feeling in foreign capitals that currying favor with his business can't hurt. It's a global perception problem, at best. "He does not forget his friends," said Emin Agalarov, who helped broker the infamous Russia campaign meeting in Trump Tower, according to Donald Trump Jr. When President Trump announced a travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries, it was hard to miss that the ban excluded Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates--all places where he had previously pursued business deals. In May the prime minister of Georgia made a visit to the White House, where, according to two of Trump's former business partners, the president asked about his old project in the former Soviet republic.