; Whereas the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice opined in 2009 that corporations owned or controlled by a foreign government are presumptively foreign states under the Emoluments Clause; Whereas President-elect Donald J. Trump has a business network, the Trump Organization, that has financial interests around the world and negotiates and concludes transactions with foreign states and entities that are extensions of foreign states; Whereas Michael Cohen, an attorney for Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization, has stated that the Trump Organization would be placed into a blind trust managed by Donald Trump’s children, Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump; Whereas the very nature of a blind trust is such that the official will have no control over, will receive no communications about, and will have no knowledge of the identity of the specific assets held in the trust, and that the manager of the trust is independent of the owner, and as such the arrangement proposed by Mr. Cohen is not a blind trust; Whereas Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush have set the precedent of using true blind trusts, in which their holdings were liquidated and placed in new investments unknown to them by an independent trustee who managed them free of familial bias; Whereas the intermingling of the business of the Trump Organization and the work of government has the potential to constitute the foreign corruption so feared by the Founding Fathers and betray the trust of America’s citizens; Whereas the intent of this resolution is to prevent any potential misunderstanding or crisis with regards to whether the actions of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States will violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, Federal law, or fundamental principles of ethics