The State Department was forced to take down a glowing profile of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort from a governnment website that caters to foreign audiences. The April 4 blog post on the State Department's ShareAmerica website described Mar-a-Lago as "Trump's Florida estate," where he has hosted foreign leaders. "By visiting this 'winter White House,' Trump is belatedly fulfilling the dream of Mar-a-Lago's original owner and designer," the post read. The little- noticed post surfaced after the U.S. embassy in London linked to it on its website. Socialite and business heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post bequeathed the estate to the US government as a “Winter White House” for presidents and visiting foreign dignitaries. No president ever used it and the government later returned it to the Post family who sold it to Donald Trump in the 1980s. (In another incident involving the State Deparment in May, the Office of Global Women's Issues retweeted -- and later deleted -- a tweet by Ivanka Trump promoting her recently published book, "Women Who Work." She completed the book before the election and has promised to donate any additional money she makes from its sales to her charitable foundaiton.) Read more

Since its grand opening on October 26, 2016, Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., has generated at least $20 million in income, according to Trump's 2016-2017 financial disclosure, released June 16, 2017. Nearly $270,000 of the revenue came from a PR firm hired by Saudi Arabia. In a May 31 filing with the Justice Deparment, MSL Group Americas reported paying more than $190,000 in lodging, $78,000 in catering and $1,600 in parking at Trump International Hotel D.C. as part of a lobbying effort to defeat the Justice Against Sponors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). JASTA, which was eventually passed by Congress, allows families of victims of terrorism to sue foreign governments that sponsor terrrorism. The Trump D.C. hotel has hosted events by the embassies of Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Kuwait. While the Azerbaijan and Bahrain parties took place before Trump was sworn in on January 20, the Kuwait Embassy's National Day celebration was held February 22. Reuters estimated the cost between $40,000 and $60,000, money that flowed through coffers of the Trump Organization, which developed the property and operates it under a government lease with a subsidiary. Read more

In February, Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his South Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Paying members were allowed to mingle with the president and the Japanese delegation. Trump also hosted Chinese Premier Xi Jinping in April. As of April 11, Trump had spent 21 days of his presidency at the "winter White House." Mar-a-Lago doubled its membership entry fee to $200,000 shortly after Trump's election, and the club's manager told The New York Times that Trump's presidency made the club more attractive: "It enhances it -- his presidency does." Trump's latest financial disclosure lists $37.25 million in income from Mar-a-Lago Club LLC in 2016 and early 2017, up from $30 million he had reported for 2015. Read more

Trump Hotels briefly entered into talks with Turkish-American real estate developer Mike Sarimsakci, whose Alterra Worldwide was to build in Dallas, Texas, a Scion hotel, a new Trump brand of low-priced hotels. Until things soured, the $50 million project was originally slated to receive funding from investors in the U.S., Turkey, Qatar and Kazakhstan, Bloomberg reported.

The Trump Organization has expressed an interest in reviving a long-dormant licensing deal in the Dominican Republic. The 2007 resort deal with the country's wealthy Hazoury family languished after the 2008 financial crisis, but interest resurged after Trump's son Eric visited the resort on Febuary 2. In news reports, the Dominican family described its relationship with the Trump Organization as “very strong.” Read more

Trump issued January 27 and March 4 executive orders attempting to impose a temporary travel ban on a handful of predominantly Muslim nations -- but the list excluded well-off Muslim countries where he has ongoing businesses or had explored future deals. Trump has real estate and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Indonesia; he has also considered real estate deals in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Since the election, however, he has dissolved shell companies created for Saudi Arabia. Read more

Foreign government entities continue to rent space at Trump Tower in New York. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a state-owned bank, is Trump Tower's biggest tenant, occupying 11 percent of the tower's office space. The United Arab Emirates' Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority also rents there. Read more

Buyers with ties to foreign governments have snapped up condos at Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver, B.C. The $360 million hotel and condo tower opened on February 28, becoming the first hotel to bear President Trump's name since his election. Under a licensing agreement with the tower's Malaysian developer, the Trump Organization receives a cut of the profits from condo sales in addition to management fees. Read more

Trump has licensed his name to a luxury residential tower in the Philippine capital of Manila — Trump Tower at Century City — to the tune of $1 million to $5 million a year in annual royalties, according to his 2016 financial disclosure. The $150 milion tower's owner, Jose E.B. Antonio, was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as a trade envoy to the United States shortly after Trump's November election. Duterte has come under fire for encouraging summary executions in a war on drugs that has killed thousands in less than a year. Duterte was a sharp critic of former President Barack Obama, but after the November election expressed optimism he could work with the Trump administration. In late April, Trump invited Duterte to visit the White House, sparking outrage from human rights groups. Adding to the controversy, an image of Ivanka Trump on a billboard for the Manila property went viral on Twitter the day after Trump invited Duterte; it was later shown to be a 4-year-old photo. Read more

Trump Towers Istanbul, a two-tower residential and office complex, is a lucrative source of revenue for the Trump Organization, accounting for $1 million to $5 million in yearly royalties. Critics say that could give Turkey leverage over Trump as the Turkish government seeks the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, the U.S.-based cleric accused of plotting last year's failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government. Read more

On February 8, Trump took to Twitter to shame Nordstrom, the high-end department store chain, for "unfairly" dropping his daughter Ivanka's lines of clothing and accessories. Trump's tweet was then retweeted by the official presidential Twitter account, @POTUS. Nordstrom said the brand wasn't selling enough.

During a television interview, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway endorsed Ivanka Trump's clothing and jewelry lines after high-end retailer Nordstrom decided to drop them earlier this year and President Trump tweeted a complaint. “I'm going to give a free commercial here," Conway said on the Fox & Friends morning news show. "Go buy it today, everybody.” Read more

After high-profile campaign promises to swiftly punish China for currency manipulation, Trump abruptly retreated in April. Earlier this year, the Chinese government's trademark office granted preliminary approval of 38 Trump trademarks.The long-sought approvals came just weeks after Trump reversed his initial opposition to the "One China" policy, which acknowledges the dominance of the Chinese government in Beijing over the breakaway island of Taiwan. Read more

Ivanka Trump has received provisional approval from the Chinese government for at least five trademarks since her father's January 20 inauguration. Three of the trademarks -- for jewelry, bags and spa services -- were granted on April 6, the same day she her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to Chinese President Xi and his wife at a Mar-a-Lago state dinner hosted by President Trump. As with 38 Donald Trump trademarks granted in February and March, the Chinese trademark office said it followed the law in approving them. Ivanka Trump has put her assets in a trust but retains ownership. Read more

After putting his assets in a trust to avoid conflicts of interest, President Trump made changes. A revised trust agreement incorporated language allowing him to withdraw money "at his request" for "maintenance, support or uninsured medical expenses," or other purposes as the trustees see fit. The amended trust, signed February 10, retains son Donald Jr. and Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, as sole trustees. Son Eric Trump serves as chairman of a trust advisory board. The agreement stipulates that the trustees will not update the president on “the holdings and income of the Trust." Read more

White House adviser Jared Kushner's sister mentioned her powerful sibling as she pitched a luxury real estate development project to prospective Chinese investors. The luxury apartment complex in Jersey City, New Jersey, is being developed by Kushner Companies and investment firm KABR Group. The two partners are seeking $150 million from foreign investors through a controversial program that offers the chance to obtain a green card (permanent residency) to foreign investors who commit at least $500,000 for job-creating projects in the U.S. The project “means a lot to me and my entire family,” Nicole Meyer said as she touted the "golden visa" program to a group of Chinese investors in Beijing on May 6, according to The New York Times. A slide identified President Trump as a "key decision maker" on the visa program. On May 7, Meyer spoke to another group of Chinese investors in Shanghai. In a promotional text message seen by Reuters, Qiaowai, the company that organized the event and links Chinese investors with American companies, made note of Meyer's relationship to President Trump and called her the event's "heavyweight honored guest." Read more

In December 2016, then President-elect Trump named activist investor and longtime friend Carl Icahn as a "special adviser" on regulatory reform. Icahn owns refiner CVR Energy, which typically buys millions of dollars worth of biofuel credits to meet government regulations requiring ethanol in gasoline. In February, according to Reuters, Icahn delivered a proposal to revamp the program to the White House. During the first quarter of 2017, Reuters said, CVR Energy posted a net gain of $6.4 million, a $50 million turnaround from a year ago, as Icahn bet the White House would ease regulations and biofuel credit prices would fall. The outspoken Icahn has been a staunch critic of the biofuel credit program and wants to shift the responsibility for meeting government biofuel standards away from refiners. Since the November election, CVR Energy’s stock price has gained 70 percent. Read more

Since President Trump took office, at least 17 ex-lobbyists, lawyers and other staffers working in the White House have received waivers from government ethics restrictions. The undated, unsigned waivers applied to officials President Trump appointed to senior positions during his first four months in office. The waivers, published on May 31, grant limited exemptions from government restrictions and ethics pledges that appointees must take under an executive order Trump signed. The order imposed a five-year ban on lobbying by appointees who leave government; requires former lobbyists to avoid issues they lobbied on; and forbids staffers from communicating about official duties with their former employers. One waiver from that latter provision appears to allow Chief White House Strategist Stephen Bannon to continue contacts with the pro-Trump news site Breitbart. Bannon served as chairman of Breitbart Media before joining Trump’s presidential campaign last August. Former pollster and current White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also received a waiver allowing her to communicate with former clients that are “political, advocacy, trade, or non-profit organizations.” The administration initially questioned the authority of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to demand release of waivers, but it yielded amid complaints by ethics watchdogs and Congressional Democrats. More waivers have been issued to appointees in government agencies but haven't yet been released. Read more

The White House has come under fire for retroactively granting Trump chief strategist Steven Bannon a waiver that allows him to communicate with Breitbart News, the outlet he used to run before joining Trump's campaign. In a June 13 letter to Democratic lawmakers, Walter Shaub, Director of the Office of Government Ethics, called the undated, unsigned waiver “problematic” because “it purports to have ‘retroactive’ effect.” The waiver, which does not name Bannon, allows all political appointees in the Executive Office of the President to ”participate in communications and meetings with news organizations” including those that they worked for “regarding broad policy matters.” Bannon was chairman of Breitbart Media before being appointed as chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign last August. After the election, Trump named him his Chief White House Strategist. Like all political appointees, Bannon signed an ethics pledge agreeing not “to participate in any particular matter” involving his former employer for a period of two years. But he has violated the pledge, according to a complaint filed with the White House Counsel by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a liberal leaning Washington watchdog. Bannon “appears to have engaged in repeated communications” with Breitbart’s editor-in-chief and Washington editor about the outlet’s coverage and exclusive interviews it received, CREW alleges in its complaint. The White House released the waiver covering Bannon two months after CREW filed its complaint, raising questions over whether it may have been issued retroactively to cover Bannon’s contacts with Breitbart. Read more

Two anti-corruption provisions of the U.S. Constitution have enabled Trump critics to take him to court over alleged ethics violations. The foreign Emoluments Clause bars federal officials holding “office(s) of profit or trust” from accepting gifts and “emoluments” from foreign governments without Congressional approval. The domestic Emoluments Clause applies only to the president and states that in addition to receiving a federal salary he will not accept “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” Since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the attorneys general of Washington, D.C. and Maryland, and more than 190 Democratic members of Congress have sued him for violating both clauses by retaining ownership of his businesses. The CREW lawsuit, filed by a group of legal scholars and former presidential ethics lawyers, came just three days after Trump’s inauguration. It accuses Trump of “illegally receiving payments from foreign governments” through his Trump International Hotel Washington, Trump Tower in New York and other business ventures.  It also alleges that Trump may have run afoul of the domestic emoluments clause because his business interests receive “some form of monetary or nonmonetary payment or benefit from the U.S. government or state governments.” In April and May, three other plaintiffs joined the suit: Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an advocacy organization for restaurant workers, event booker Jill Phaneuff and New York hotelier Eric Good. “As a hotel and restaurant owner, the President puts restaurateurs and restaurant workers nationwide at a disadvantage, pursuing foreign dignitaries and governments to patronize his establishments over others,” ROCU said.   Two other lawsuits followed after the Department of Justice asked a federal judge in New York to throw out the CREW complaint. On June 12, the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., both Democrats, sued Trump for allegedly violating both emoluments clauses.  The lawsuit in part focuses on Trump’s Washington hotel and alleges that it has hurt businesses in the Washington and Maryland area by diverting customers away from them. On June 14, more than 190 Democratic lawmakers filed a separate lawsuit against Trump, alleging he had accepted funds from foreign governments that booked his hotels without congressional approval.  At least 30 U.S. senators and 166 representatives were plaintiffs in the lawsuit, representing the largest number of legislators ever to sue a U.S. president Read more

Germany’s Deutsche Bank, the largest lender to the Trump Organization, gave a loan of $285 million to Jared Kushner’s real estate company one month before the November presidential election, the Washington Post reported June 26, citing documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kushner personally guaranteed the loan along with his brother Josh but he failed to mention it in a mandatory financial disclosure form he filed with the Office of Government Ethics in March. Deutsche Bank has lent at least $364 million to Trump's real estate business, the Trump Organization. The bank's loan to Kushner Companies in October came at a time Deutsche was negotiating to settle a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit over its sale of risky mortgage-backed securities and faced separate money laundering charges involving its Moscow branch. In December, the bank agreed to pay $7.2 billion to settle the civil lawsuit and $630 million in penalties to New York State over the money laundering scheme; the money laundering investigation remains unresolved. Kushner resigned as chief executive of his family business in January to join the White House as a senior adviser to the president. To avoid conflicts of interest, he sold off dozens of businesses. But a Washington Post analysis of his recent financial disclosure form showed that he’s kept nearly 90 percent of his real estate holdings. The disclosure lists hundreds of millions of dollars in assets owned by Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, as well as liabilities, including a personal line of credit of up to $25 million from Deutsche Bank. But the form omits the October Deustche Bank loan even though Kushner personally guaranteed it, the Post reported. Kushner’s business entanglements have drawn scrutiny at a time his finances are being investigated by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his larger probe into Russian meddling in the 2018 election, according to the Post. Read more