Trump says he’ll leave his business

Details of plan to avoid conflicts remain unclear

WASHINGTON • President-elect Donald J. Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that he would soon leave his “great business in total” to focus on the presidency, a response to growing worries over the businessman-in-chief’s conflicts of interest around the globe.

The announcement marked a turn from Trump’s months-long refusal to distance himself from his private business while holding the highest public office in the country.

But it remained unclear whether the new arrangement would include a full sale of Trump’s stake or, as he has offered before, a ceding of company management to his children, which ethics advisers have said would not resolve worries that the business could still influence his decisions in the Oval Office.

“I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump tweeted.

“While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses. Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!”

Presidents are not bound by the strict conflict-of-interest laws governing most U.S. elected officials. But most modern presidents have agreed to sell or sequester their assets in a “blind trust,” led by an independent manager.

Giving company management to his children — Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka — would still leave open the potential for Trump to make presidential decisions for their benefit. The children have already played a key part in Trump’s governing preparations.

Trump spokespeople did not immediately return requests for more details on the move. But Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under president George W. Bush, said the move did not appear to offer enough of a division to keep entanglement worries at bay.

“That’s business operations, not ownership. The problem is, we need to resolve the conflicts of interest that arise from his ownership. And we’re hearing nothing about how that’s getting resolved,” Painter said.

In one confusing move, the official Twitter account of the Office of Government Ethics, which traditionally works closely with presidential transition teams, celebrated Wednesday morning that Trump had committed to fully divesting his company stake, though Trump has publicly said no such thing.

The tweets were deleted within an hour of their first posting.