Our foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, has happily used the same law firm since 2011. Its lawyers have provided valuable counsel on matters both complex and mundane.
That all came to a crashing halt on January 11. That’s when Donald Trump held a news conference to explain how he planned to separate his own vast personal financial interests from what should be his single-minded devotion to the best interests of the nation. Standing by his side, and actively explaining and justifying Trump’s plans, was a senior attorney from our law firm — Sheri Dillon, of the firm Morgan Lewis.
What we heard was shocking. Mr. Trump would not do what every previous president has done for half a century and what every federal official other than him is required by law to do: transfer ownership of his assets to a “blind trust,” managed by a completely independent financial trustee.
Ms. Dillon’s plan: let Mr. Trump maintain full ownership and just have his sons manage all his assets, which they would hold in “trust” for him.
Wait — what?!
Ethics experts had been unanimous in warning Mr. Trump. Becoming President will change the reasons that people want to invest in your real-estate empire. It’s not just about buildings anymore. It’s a chance for this corporation or that foreign government to curry favor with you, to buy influence over America’s policies. And it opens up huge opportunities for Trump the president to vastly enrich Trump the businessman.
How will Americans know if he’s opposing wind energy because fossil fuels are better or because wind turbines would spoil the view from his Scottish golf course? How will they know if he hates the alternative minimum tax because it hurts ordinary American taxpayers or because repeal would reduce his own tax bill by $31 million in a single year (based on two recently released pages of his 2005 federal income tax return)? If nobody knows whether he is acting in America’s best interest or just to make himself richer, Americans’ faith in the integrity of our democracy would be rocked to its core.
A Nonsolution
Especially worrisome is his foreign income. If anything of value comes to him from a foreign power, it could violate the Constitution — and be grounds for impeachment. Our Founding Fathers saw great peril in our leaders possibly being corrupted by other countries’ bribes or favors (“emoluments” to them).
Ms. Dillon has legitimized a complete nonsolution to President Trump’s vast conflicts of interest. She has put a “for sale (or rent)” sign on the nation’s highest office.
If Mr. Trump wants to charge an extra $100,000 for the privilege of joining his Florida country club, no problem.
Ban travel from Muslim countries except those where he has business interests? Fine.
Hire a new “director of diplomatic sales” at his DC hotel to actively recruit business from foreign governments? (Kuwait paid $60,000 to rent a ballroom for one party; the fanciest suite goes for $140,000 a week.) Feel free.
How about letting foreign governments contribute in indirect ways — like lighter regulation, expedited building permits, lower interest rates (one of his Manhattan buildings is financed by nine-figure debt from China’s state-owned bank), or granting 38 valuable trademarks in one day (China again)? The welcome mat’s out and the door’s wide open.
Ms. Dillon added a few window-dressing safeguards, like hiring an “ethics adviser” to review all deals. Not for a second did she discuss how this ethics watchdog, or the American people, could be alerted to the possibility of a conflict of interest when the best documentation of President Trump’s sources of income — his tax returns — remains willfully concealed.
And she proposed that the sons’ written reports to him should contain nothing that ordinary Americans can’t learn “through the media.” Of course, she didn’t try to limit their oral communications with him, which left his son Eric free to promise recently that he would keep his dear father up-to-date on “profitability ... and stuff like that.” And the sons have touchingly promised to “make him very proud.”
Foreign Influence
Ms. Dillon sees no constitutional limit on Mr. Trump’s business dealings with foreign powers, as long as it’s just “commerce” at “fair market value.” Really? There’s no possibility of undue foreign influence when an American president is also a global businessman whose personal fortune depends on the forbearance of foreign regulators and the largess of foreign investors and customers?
It is painfully obvious that President Trump is using his office for personal gain. And Morgan Lewis has legitimized it. All those properties still belong to him, and it is simply ridiculous to imagine that his sons might be some sort of buffer against corporations and foreign governments being ostentatiously generous to Trump to ingratiate themselves with him.
The sham “trust” arrangement that Ms. Dillon has blessed — enabling unchecked self-dealing, flouting of the Constitution, and concealment of the truth from the public that President Trump has sworn to serve — is inconsistent with our foundation’s values of open and accountable democratic governance and, we fear, destructive to the fabric of our democracy.
Americans deserve a president of undivided loyalty. Morgan Lewis has denied them that. We refuse to be complicit. That’s why we fired the firm as our lawyers.
We should add that subsequent events have only reinforced our concerns. Last week Ms. Dillon re-emerged in the news media after the White House released a letter she and a colleague, William Nelson, had written to Mr. Trump two months earlier. They assured him, based on their knowledge of his tax returns over the past decade, that “your tax returns do not reflect” significant financial dealings with Russia. President Trump cited the letter as proof that “I have nothing to do with Russia.”
The letter proves absolutely nothing of the sort. It cites “a few exceptions” which could be huge (such as condominium sales) and is so carefully worded and conclusory as to allow vast possibilities of indirect Russian financial connections through intermediary entities. To the extent that the letter was intended for public consumption (which is the only possible reason for it, since Mr. Trump surely knows the extent of his own business dealings), it is contemptuous of the public interest: “Trust us -- we’ve seen his tax returns, so you don’t need to.”
The letter may have been a welcome service to the firm’s client, but it’s a terrible disservice to the nation. If we hadn’t fired them before, we sure would now.
Scott Wallace and Scott Fitzmorris are co-chairs of the Wallace Global Fund, in Washington.
Note: This article was updated on May 19 at 1 pm to add a section about a letter the law firm released regarding Mr. Trump’s tax returns.
