It's business unusual for Trump US law does not forbid Donald Trump from managing his corporate empire from the White House, according to one of his top advisers, who counselled nevertheless that the billionaire''s businesses be run by his adult children.Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and one of the leaders of Trump''s presidential transition team, told CNN that American presidents are not covered under laws preventing high government officials from having private industry ventures while in office.
“You realise that those laws don''t apply to the president, right? The president doesn''t have to have a blind trust,” Giuliani told CNN.
“For some reason, when the law was written, the president was exempt,” said Giuliani, an attorney who also served years ago with the US Justice Department. “I think he''s in a very unusual situation,” Giuliani said of Trump.
In a separate interview on ABC''s ''This Week'', Giuliani suggested that Trump should nevertheless remove himself from the running of his business empire.
“For the good of the country, and the fact you don''t want a question coming up every time there''s a decision made, he should basically take himself out of it, and just be a passive participant in the sense that he has no decision-making, no involvement,” he said.
Accusations of mixing business with politics are not new, but the problem takes on new dimensions with Trump, whose name is inextricably linked to his property empire that extends beyond US borders. Under current law, while non-elected members of the US administration face stringent constraints on their business activities, those rules do not apply to the president or vice president.
Managing political relations with US allies while president risks creating a curious mix of competing goals.
“The man is an enormously wealthy man,” Giuliani said, but said he does not see “real fear of suspicion that he''s seeking to enrich himself by being rich. He wouldn''t have run for president.”
NEWS24