Ethics experts are warning about conflict-of-interest issues raised by a hazy new cryptocurrency venture being launched by Donald Trump's sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
The strategy poses landmines not only for a potential new Trump administration but during the Republican presidential candidate's campaign as it could appear he is proffering future deals for crypto companies and investors behind the scenes who contribute to his race, experts note.
"To promise crypto-friendly policies and have your family engage in the same business is ... Conflict of Interest 101," Ishan Mehta, director for media and democracy at Common Cause, a nonprofit that advocates for government transparency, told Politico.
The former president last week announced a new cryptocurrency enterprise called "The DeFiant Ones," but offered few details.
"For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites. It's time we take a stand — together," the former president wrote in a post on Truth Social linking to a Telegram channel for the "Trump DeFi project," World Liberty Financial, being kicked off by his boys.
Trump in the past has slammed cryptocurrency as a "scam."
But last week he announced the U.S. would be the "crypto capital of the world," and vowed to launch "industry friendly" policies if he wins the White House that could presumably benefit his own family fortunes.
Son Eric Trump earlier last month crowed in a post: "I have truly fallen in love with Crypto/DeFi." Trump Jr. followed up with: "We're about to shake up the crypto world with something HUGE."
Trump first talked up crypto at Mar-a-Lago event in May to supporters who bought his crypto-linked digital trading cards.
The new operation "does present a strong possibility of a conflict of interest," John P. Pelissero, the director of government ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, told Politico. "Doing anything to promote crypto so it might benefit his sons' future business is a problem."
From an "optics perspective, it's terrible," said Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush and later ran for Congress as a Democrat.
It's extremely unusual for a presidential candidate to plug an operation that may include a private family enterprise two months before an election.
But Trump has often intermingled his private businesses with elected life, including profiting from catered parties, dinners, drinks and hotel stays by politicians and world leaders at his Trump International Hotel while serving in the White House.
The nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has listed what its investigators consider 3,700 conflicts of interest during the Trump administration.
Trump's sons took over control of their father's business, the Trump Organization, after he became president in 2017, but he retained ownership of the company, continued to profit from the business and appeared to often continue to control it.
