The Trump administration has received the first new petitions on the website whitehouse.gov, and both of them deal with the new president’s finances.
The website petitions.whitehouse.gov has had two petitions since Trump assumed the presidency at noon Friday. The first wants Trump to immediately release his full tax returns and the second is to “divest or put in a blind trust” his businesses.
The website lets people create a petition, and if it gets more than 100,000 signatures it will receive an official response from the White House.
Both issues have dogged Trump.
Trump said during the campaign that he wasn’t releasing his tax returns, per traditional campaign customs, due to an ongoing Internal Revenue Service audit. However, the agency has said that the audit doesn’t preclude him from releasing his returns.
Trump also originally promised to put his businesses in a blind trust after he was elected president. A blind trust means that Trump would have no say whatsoever in his business empire, leaving it to his sons Eric and Donald Jr. to run.
However, Trump retracted that approach and said he is hiring an ethics official to ensure that any new deals in his businesses don’t create any new conflicts. The head of the Office of Government Ethics said that the plan lacked teeth and that it would do little to impede conflicts of interest.
The petition for Trump to release his tax returns has 6,004 signatures and the petition for creating a blind trust 414 signatures on Friday evening.
Petitions have 30 days to get to the signature goal.
