Trump has refused to release his tax returns so the public will never know whether he is making decisions to enrich himself and his family. He recently issued an executive order to resume the Dakota Access pipeline, cutting through ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux and endangering the tribe’s water supply. Did he make this decision to enrich himself? Since he refuses to disclose his holdings and refuses to divest ownership of his business, the public has no way of knowing whether he is acting for self-interest.
MoveOn.org sent out this petition:
Dear fellow MoveOn member,
President Trump just signed an executive order that could allow work on the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to proceed—threatening the water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and 17 million people who live and work along the shore of the Missouri River.1
Trump’s team has claimed he has no conflict of interest, but their word is not enough. Will you sign and share this petition urging Congress to require Trump to prove he is not profiting off this executive order?
Require President Trump to provide the audit trail of papers proving he is no longer involved in any way, shape, or form with the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Sign Roxanne’s petition
Federal disclosure forms filed in May of 2016 showed that President Donald Trump held shares in Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66, both part of the DAPL entity. A Trump spokesperson announced that he had sold off his shares in Energy Transfer Partners, but the Trump team would not say whether he had sold his stake in Phillips 66.2
This presents a clear conflict of interest if he cannot prove he is fully divested of all interest in the pipeline, and was before he signed his executive order.
If the President has truly divested, he should easily be able to prove it and put the claim to rest. If he cannot, he has no business signing executive orders that cause conflicts of interest.
Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.
Thanks!
—Roxanne Saxton
Sources:
1. “Trump Pins Keystone, Dakota Pipeline Fate on Renegotiation,” Bloomberg, January 24, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/7790?t=5&akid=177043.27327500.4EGWBM
2. “Trump Owns Stake In Hotly Disputed $3.8 Billion Oil Pipeline, Conflict Of Interest Looms,” Forbes, November 26, 2016
http://act.moveon.org/go/7791?t=7&akid=177043.27327500.4EGWBM
Diane Ravitch's blog 
At least one commentator has opined that the Trump administration will be the most corrupt in history. There seems to be credible evidence that this is so.
“Standing Rock”
Thank you, Larry. Dumb error.
I think whether or not Trump has financial ties to the DAPL is not the line of attack we need. Even if, by chance, he is personally clean of such ties, I’m sure he has plenty of cronies who benefit from it. And in any case, even if it were proven that he does have a conflict of interest, what then? Frankly, the hand of God Himself could write in the sky that he definitively does have financial ties and that wouldn’t matter a whit to his supporters.
The issue is whether the pipeline itself is a good or bad thing. Many labor unions support it because of jobs, which is why Hillary never came out against it. Personally, though, I’m opposed to it on environmental grounds and, as far as the location through the Sioux lands, I’m opposed to it on cultural and Indian sovereignty grounds.
So the issue then is how do we stop it? It’s a shame that our previous two presidents normalized and codified the use of the executive order, something our Founders never intended, because this really is a case of presidential overreach. Seems like there should be clear Constitutional grounds for stopping this legally, but, yeah, I know, good luck with that.
Barring a legal stop to it, we’re going to have to flood Congresscritters with calls, letters, emails and personal visits and we’re going to need bodies on the ground protesting again. All things that take personal commitment. In other words, we’re going to have to physically organize. Same is true of all the other evils that Trump is ramming through. We’re going to have to decide if we really are committed to being opposed to Trump or if it’s just fun to gripe about him online.
Griping about this miscreant online is good too. It gives many the info and courage to act.
Why go so far out on the limb and risk compromising so much good work?
Donald Trump, as a businessman, had investments in Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas company building the pipeline.
According to CNBC, in December, he sold his entire stake in the company as ownership in it could be perceived as a conflict of interest.
CNBC reported that Energy Transfer Partners’ owner, Kelcy Warren, “gave $100,000 to Trump’s joint fundraising effort with the Republican Party.”
According to The Washington Post, in 2015, Trump’s share in the company was “between $500,000 and $1 million.”
Trump also owned “between $100,000 and $250,000 in Phillips 66, which has a one-quarter share of Dakota Access,” CBS News reported.
In another bad sign for the pipeline’s opponents, Trump chose former Texas Governor Rick Perry as his energy secretary. Perry sat on the board of Energy Transfer Partners.
http://heavy.com/news/2017/01/trump-dakota-access-pipeline-executive-order-dapl-standing-rock-no-keystone-investment-energy-transfer-partners-kelcy-warren-donation/
The pipeline follows another existing pipeline and is some 70 miles from ancestral lands according to the maps.
LInks with maps?