Ethics experts say Trump’s recent investments in and public praise for the tech company create the appearance of a conflict of interest.
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Government ethics watchdogs are sounding the alarm after the Pentagon announced that the U.S. tech company Dell has been granted a $9.7 billion government contract, pointing to stock transactions that suggest President Donald Trump potentially stands to gain financially from the deal.
Trump has repeatedly praised the company at public events, and government disclosure forms show that on Feb. 10 Trump’s portfolio acquired stock in Dell Technologies valued between $1 million and $5 million. Nine days later, at a rally in Georgia, the president encouraged supporters to “go out and buy a Dell computer.” Three additional purchases of Dell stock, all valued at or below $50,000, followed in March.
Over the spring, Trump continued to praise Dell at public events, most recently giving the company a shout-out during a White House Rose Garden luncheon.
Less than three weeks later, Dell’s stock surged in response to this week’s announcement that the Defense Department has awarded the company’s federal subsidiary a major contract to oversee the procurement of Microsoft software for the U.S. military.
The Pentagon announcement said Dell’s work “will streamline and consolidate software acquisition across the [Defense Department], the Intelligence Community, and the Coast Guard.” Dell has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft and is a major buyer of Microsoft Windows PC licenses.
The company’s founder, Michael Dell, has appeared at White House events during Trump’s second term and sits on the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dell’s family foundation pledged more than $6 billion last year to help fund “Trump accounts,” which will seed investments for 25 million American children.
“This absolutely does ring alarm bells with regard to conflicts of interest,” said Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.
When asked about the potential conflict of interest, the White House responded with a statement praising Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, for their contributions to the Trump accounts.
“President Trump’s only interest is doing what’s best for the American people, and his effusive praise for the Dells is rooted only in their patriotic contribution of over $6 billion to the Trump Accounts of 25 million working-class American children,” White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote.
The Trump Organization said earlier this month that the president’s investment holdings are managed exclusively by independent third-party financial institutions.
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Presidents are exempt from a conflict-of-interest law that prohibits federal employees from taking action in their official roles that would benefit their personal finances. There is also no legal requirement requiring a sitting president to give up a financial benefit because of a potential conflict.
Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center and a former Office of Government Ethics lawyer, said in a statement that although the ethics rules do not apply to the president or vice president, “the ethics norm has been for presidents to historically avoid even the appearance of self-enrichment.”
“The fact that President Trump promoted a company owned by his friend that he also invests in does, indeed, create an appearance of a conflict of interest, though it does not constitute an actual ethics violation under the current rules,” she added.
Williams said the federal government should “revisit the arrangement whereby we rely on the president’s own sense of integrity rather than law to avoid conflicts of interest”; such a move would require an act of Congress.
Independent watchdog groups have long charged that Trump, in his second term, has used his office for his personal gain and that of his family.
Since his election, the Trump family has profited from Trump-themed cryptocurrency and signed overseas deals in countries that have reason to cozy up to the United States and its leader.
More recently, Trump agreed to drop a lawsuit against the IRS — which he oversees — as part of an agreement that established a nearly $1.8 billion Justice Department fund to compensate those who, like him, claim they have been targets of a “weaponized” justice system. As part of the agreement, the IRS is barred from pursuing any existing claims of unpaid taxes against Trump, members of his family or his businesses.
Along with the Dell stock purchases, Trump’s latest financial disclosure, released earlier this month, revealed tens of millions of dollars in other trades. The form showed, for example, that Trump purchased stock in leading companies such as Microsoft and Amazon months before the Pentagon announced deals to deploy their technology in classified computer networks.
Trump’s assets are held in a trust managed by his children. That differs from previous presidents’ blind trusts, which were not managed by family members and were designed to prevent their owners from knowing how their investments were being handled.
For his part, the president has criticized congressional Democrats for years for making stock trades that he says are based on insider information. At his State of the Union address in February, Trump called for the passage of a bipartisan bill to ban congressional stock trading, but the measure has stalled.
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Emily Davies and Cat Zakrzewski contributed to this report.
