The Foreign-Profit Identification Gap
- Promised
- At Trump's January 2017 press conference, counsel for the Trump Organization said the arrangement would isolate him from the business, bar new foreign deals and donate foreign-government hotel profits to the Treasury.Open cited record · 2 sources
- The record
- The company's internal policy said it would not require every guest to identify a foreign-government relationship and generally relied on self-identification.Open cited record · 2 sourcesLater Mazars records documented foreign-government-linked payments beyond what the public donation disclosures could independently reconcile.Open cited record · 2 sources
- Who gained
- Trump hotel businesses
- Trump hotel businesses
- United States Treasury
- Who paid
- United States Treasury
- Foreign-government patrons
- Audit finding
- contradicted
The identification policy could not comprehensively identify foreign-government patronage, leaving the announced donation promise unauditable against the full customer base.
Causal strength: documented mechanism