Former President Donald Trump‘s peddling commercial products while running for the White House is putting campaign finance norms to the test, according to ethics experts.
The latest example came this week when the GOP nominee announced Trump-branded gold watches, which he called “truly special,” sandwiched between campaign stops and meeting with a world leader.
“The Official Trump Watch Collection is here, and these Watches are truly special,” Trump wrote in a social media post that included a link to GetTrumpWatches.com. “You’re going to love them. Would make a great Christmas Gift. Don’t wait, they will go fast. GET YOUR TRUMP WATCH RIGHT NOW!”
The watches themselves start at $499 for the “Fight Fight Fight” version and range all the way up to $100,000 for a “Tourbillon” edition, which features hundreds of diamonds and a personalized “thank you” engraving.
It’s just the latest in a wide range of Trump-branded products the former president has promoted throughout his political career that, according to Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, flouts rules governing elected officials and their personal businesses.
“He’s integrated his business model with his official duties as president and a public official, so he is merging his public obligations with his private personal interests and actually enriching himself in the process,” Holman told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
“This is not a clear violation of the Federal Elections Campaign Act, because the office of the president has to be somewhat isolated from some of the ethics rules,” he continued. “However, it runs absolutely contrary to ethics norms that all other presidents, at least for the last 60 years, have practiced in public office.”
Former general counsel for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics Don Fox told the Washington Post earlier this month, before Trump’s latest business ventures, that there is “no precedent in history at all, and certainly not in modern history, for somebody who has monetized the office or running for office of president the way he has.”
Still, Holman noted that, while technically the conflicts of interest code doesn’t directly apply to presidents, that hasn’t stopped modern presidents not named Trump from divesting before entering office, like other elected officials.
“Jimmy Carter even got rid of his peanut farm,” he joked. “However, Donald Trump has decided that the law doesn’t apply to him. He just flouts it.”
This cycle alone, Trump has started selling sneakers, perfumes, digital trading cards and currencies, Bibles, coins with his face on them, and more. Before launching his political career, that list included goods like vodka, steaks, ties, and even bottled water.
His latest candidate financial disclosure forms, which were made public in August, show that virtually all of these “paid license agreements” are handled by CIC Ventures LLC. A second body, NFT INT. LLC, oversees the licensing agreement for his digital trading cards, and together, those two LLCs earned Trump more than $12 million from August of 2023-2024, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Those forms do not disclose any earnings from the sale of Trump’s sneakers, which he launched in February, the cryptocurrency he launched alongside his sons earlier in September, the $100 silver coins bearing his face he began selling this week, or the new Trump watches.
Trump’s FEC filings also showed that, over the past year, the former president held between $1 million and $5 million in the cryptocurrency etherium, pulled in $57 million from his Palm Beach, Florida, club, Mar-a-Lago, and owned 115 million shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his social media company, Truth Social, worth more than $2 billion based on the latest stock price. The forms also showed hundreds of millions in legal liabilities stemming from multiple lawsuits.
The websites for Trump’s various products bear disclaimers explaining that sale proceeds do not go to Trump’s campaign nor the Trump Organization.
According to a disclaimer on a sales website, the watches are covered by a similar agreement to license Trump’s name, image, and likeness, and proceeds from their sales do not go to Trump’s campaign or the Trump Organization and “are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.”
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Ultimately, Holman told the Washington Examiner that closing the FEC loopholes allowing Trump, or any president, to continue these licensing deals would involve restructuring the FEC itself but that it’s not impossible down the road.
“But if it becomes an egregious problem, and we do eventually succeed in changing the nature of the FEC, then I would expect this to be addressed by the FEC,” he stated. “Mixing private, personal gain with public office, and one’s campaign for public office, just poses a very, very serious conflict of interest, and when you have those types of conflict of interest, official decisions and official actions are often based on private gain rather than the public interest and merit.”
