The acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said on Thursday that Mr. Trump was the first to recommend the Doral resort as a site for the G7.
“We were back in the dining room and I was going over it with a couple of our advance team,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “We had the list, and he goes, ‘What about Doral?’ And it was like, ‘That’s not the craziest idea. It makes perfect sense.’ “
These statements alone would likely be enough to create a conflict-of-interest problem for Mr. Trump if he were not president, ethics and procurement lawyers said.
“If this was the secretary of commerce who had the power to decide where an event like this would be held and he or she decides it should be held at a property he or she owns, and would generate income, that probably would be a conflict of interest” said Jan W. Baran, who served during President George Bush’s tenure on a presidential commission that studied federal ethics laws, and also previously served as general counsel at the Republican National Committee.
It is a violation of the law if an executive branch employee “participates personally,” in a “decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or otherwise,” in a matter that directly financially impacts a company owned by that employee’s spouse, children “or an organization that he is serving as officer, director, trustee, general partner,” the statue says.
A separate federal Standards of Conduct regulation issued by the Office of Government Ethics in 1992 says that ”employees shall not use public office for private gain,” although again these rules do not apply to the president.
The president and vice president are exempt, Mr. Baran said, because Congress generally cannot pass restrictions that apply to them as the president cannot be forced to recuse himself and delegate his constitutional powers to someone else.