Donald Trump Jr. raises ethics questions with business trip to India
NEW YORK, (MILLAT ONLINE):US President Donald Trump’s eldest son’s current business trip to India has raised concerns here about mixing his father’s family business interests with U.S. foreign policy.
Donald Trump Jr. was set to attend dinners this week in several Indian cities in an effort to promote Trump-branded luxury apartment and condominium complexes outside New Delhi, according to US media reports.
“The apartments are expensive ” though not outrageously so in the overheated real-estate world of India’s wealthy elite. An apartment in the Trump Towers complex in Gurgaon runs between $775,000 and $1.5 million.
Although the Trump Organization reportedly closed on the Indian developments before Trump took office, critics have questioned whether members of the first family should continue their involvement in foreign business projects.
Trump Jr.’s trip also involves a scheduled appearance at a New Delhi business conference that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to attend, creating a situation where diplomacy and Trump Organization business could overlap, The Washington Examiner pointed out.
“They are auctioning off access to the first family in a foreign land,” Norman Eisen, chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN. “What is to stop a foreign national with interests before the U.S. government from asking Don Junior to raise some issue or concern with his father? We know that father and son talk all the time, and discuss business.”
The US State Department, meanwhile, distanced itself from Trump Jr.’s trip to India, telling reporters he is traveling as a private citizen and that the agency played no role in shaping his message during the visit.
Heather Nauert, a spokeswoman for the department, said “overall, the United States embassy doesn’t have any role in that visit,” and that Trump Jr. is not visiting in an official capacity.Trump Jr. doesn’t hold a post in his father’s administration.
When the president took office last year, he handed control of day-to-day operations of his real estate empire to Trump Jr. and his second son, Eric Trump.
Trump Jr.’s trip to India, however, has raised concern among some ethics watchdogs that the Trump Organization, the president’s for-profit company, is hawking access to the president’s son abroad.
Nauert, the State Department’s spokesperson, however, denied that Trump Jr.’s trip was in any kind of official capacity.
“He is there as a private citizen and I don’t have any comment beyond that,”
Some ethics experts have scrutinized the revenue Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. has earned from foreign dignitaries and special interest groups who might book events or stays at the hotel in an effort to reach the president.
Public Citizen, a watchdog group, released a report last month that documented dozens of instances in which potential conflicts of interest arose from groups or politicians that patronized Trump properties.
“Business is booming at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., not because of the decor, but because corporations and foreign governments want to curry favour with the president,” Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said in a statement.