Past the one-year mark, personal Trump finances draw queries

Questions persist about the boundaries between Donald Trump’s role as president and his personal financial interests.

As is widely known, he never formally separated himself from his Trump Organization. He never released his tax forms. His grown children remain in a gray zone between business and advisory roles.

So one year into his elected term, Trump’s personal-private issues still generate a regular drumbeat of news coverage.

Last week, The Guardian reported that a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump Jr. was offered to the first 100 investors in a luxury property in India bearing the family’s name.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that the president’s Washington, D.C., hotel got a $54 million reduction in its local tax assessment, saving the company nearly $1 million.

Although he resigned from his company last year, Trump’s private fortune still gains from the hotel. The company leases the property from the federal government. The hotel does business with foreign governments.

As reported by the McClatchy DC Bureau website and by the BBC, foreign governments have intervened to help improve areas around Trump-branded properties in their nations.

Earlier, a smaller detail came out that the Secret Service rents Trump’s golf carts to stay close to him when he steps onto the links at his private clubs in New Jersey and Florida.

“Donald Trump’s sprawling set of businesses — and his refusal to divest his financial interests in hotels, golf courses, restaurants and real estate developments around the world — has presented a unique set of conflicts that previously were unimaginable for the president of the United States,” the reform group Public Citizen said in a report last week.

The business relationship of Deutsche Bank AG with both the president’s own real estate enterprise and that of his son-in-law Jared Kushner continues to draw notice.

Last month, Bloomberg News reported that the bank provided records to special counsel Robert Mueller pursuant to a subpoena pertaining to people affiliated with Trump.

The more Mueller, in particular, combs through matters pertaining to Trump businesses, the more public speculation about personal Trump finances will result.

By Dan Janison

dan.janison@newsday.comDanJanison

Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.