Donald Trump

US Republican president-elect and billionaire businessman.

Financial stocks

Trump holds ownership stakes in more than 500 companies worldwide.

Oil company stocks

His 2016 federal disclosure forms show he owned between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in the Energy Transfer Partners company, down from between $500,000 and $1 million a year earlier. He also owns between $100,000 and $250,000 in Phillips 66, which has a one-quarter share of Dakota Access. This could affect his view of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline project and the decision he makes as president.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, who donated $3,000 to Trump's campaign, plus $100,000 to a committee supporting Trump's candidacy and $66,800 to the Republican National Committee, told the Associated Press how he expected his infrastructure projects to go under Trump: 'Do I think it's going to get easier? Of course'.

Moreover, in his own administration, at least two possible candidates for energy secretary could also benefit. Oil billionaire Harold Hamm could use the pipeline to transport the oil from his company, Continental Resources, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry serves on the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners.

Legal issues

The New York Times described Trump as the future president facing 'a tsunami of litigation' when taking office. As of November 2016, at least 75 of the 4,000-plus lawsuits underway against him or his companies were still open, according to USA Today's investigation. They range from small battles with pageant contestants to multimillion dollar real estate lawsuits. The newspaper warns that these could not only prove very distracting for the president, they could also create conflicts of interest. For instance, in 2016 he attacked a federal judge who is presiding over the lawsuit against Trump University, saying District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is biased against Trump because the judge is of Mexican descent and Trump proposes a 'great wall' along the Mexican border. There might be a possibility that his judicial appointments be influenced by his court cases.

The review showed that Trump frequently used the 'scorched-earth approach' to lawsuits, meaning he 'responds to even small disputes with overwhelming legal force, not hesitating to use his tremendous wealth and legal firepower against adversaries with limited resources'. The review also shows Trump and his companies have been accused for years of mistreating women.

Trump University cases

Former students from across the US have sued in two class actions, accusing the Trump University of charging them up to $35,000 only to lie about the value of the lessons they would receive. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued in 2013 and has since described Trump University as a 'fraud' and a 'scam.'

Some legal commentators believed that, if Trump or his University are found liable for fraud, this could provide Congress with the grounds to consider impeachment proceedings. Even though information on his accusations is private, Trump’s candidacy has prompted court battles to get records in his cases unsealed. Upon becoming president, Trump settle the lawsuit for $25 million.

Links with established elite

Trump's 'team of gazillionaires'

In an article published on November 24th 2016 and entitled 'Trump's team of gazillionaires', Politico reported that his newly assembled administration 'could be worth as much as $35 billion' and was very much part of the elite he seemed to rally against in his speeches. He has already hired:

• Betsy DeVos: businesswoman and supporter of the Acton Insitute, whose family is worth $5.1 billion
• Steve Bannon for White House Adviser: has likely earned millions off his stake in the show Seinfeld alone and may have earned as much while at Goldman Sachs.

And is considering:

• Harold Hamm: oil mogul ($15.3 billion)
• Wilbur Ross: investor ($2.9 billion)
• Mitt Romney: private equity investor ($250 million at last count)
• Steven Mnuchin: hedge fund magnate at Goldman Sachs (at least $46 million)
• Rudy Giuliani}: super-lawyer (estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars)
• Todd Ricketts for Deputy Commerce Secretary: comes from the billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs
• Ben Carson for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: retired neurosurgeon (estimated fortune of $26 million)
• Andrew Puzder for Labor Secretary: made more than $4.4 million in 2012 as CEO of the holding company of restaurant chains.

Links with climate denialists

Views

He tweeted in 2012 that 'the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.' In 2016, Trump even pledged to roll back Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan — a set of rules that requires states to substantially reduce their emissions over the next few decades.

Appointments on his team

To run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in his transition team, Trump picked a climate denialist named Myron Ebell, who served as director of global warming and environmental policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). According to Business Insider, '[i]n practice, that means he spends his time rejecting and trying to discredit scientists who work to understand the global climate.' Indeed, Ebell argued Business Insider during a 2016 interview that climate scientists were 'global warming alarmists' and suggested that climate research is actually an arm of a coordinated political movement. He added:

'I think it would be much better to free up the economy and get rid of the EPA rules and a lot of the Department of Energy programs and let the economy boom forward.'

To this news, Dan Lashof, COO of the environmental group NextGen Climate America, reacted by saying: 'You know, [Trump] said he was going to drain the swamp in Washington, and instead he's put Myron Ebell — a swamp rat, a DC insider lobbyist — in charge of the transition at the EPA'

Links with counterjihad movement

Policy proposal to 'ban all Muslims'

In December 2015, Trump proposed in a speech to 'ban' the entry into the U.S to all Muslims, referring to the refugee crisis . As a justification for it, he used a survey that was created by the Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney, claiming to show that many US-based Muslims were willing to use violence against other Americans and that even more wanted the option to be governed by Sharia. The survey turned out to be 'bogus'.

Appoints foreign policy adviser with strong counterjihad movement links

Of the eight people appointed as advisors to 2016 candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, all have connections to Center for Security Policy and half hold ranking positions within the group.

• Walid Phares: Lebanese-American 'counter-terrorism expert'. Mother Jones revealed that Phares, 'was a high ranking political official in a [Christian] sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon's brutal, 15-year civil war.' He was a guest on an ACT! for America series in 2011 and has spoken at several events organized by the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

• Senator Jeff Sessions – described as 'one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim federal officials' by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He received the “Daring the Odds” award from the David Horowitz Freedom Center for his efforts to prevent undocumented youth from receiving temporary status in the United States in 2014. In September 2015, Sessions attacked Obama’s plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the US, stating, 'it has also been reported that 3 in 4 of those seeking relocation from the Middle East are not refugees but economic migrants from many countries.'

• Joseph E. Schmitz – Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He spent three years as the Pentagon’s Inspector General before leaving under a barrage of scrutiny. According to the Los Angeles Times, 'Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines.' He is a co-author of two CSP reports: 'Shariah: The Threat to America,' and 'The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement.'

Other advisors on Trump's transition team

• Kris Kobach: only a few days after Trump was elected in 2016, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, considered for the post of attorney general at the time, said in an interview that Trump’s policy advisers had discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries. Kobach was reported as a key member of Trump's transition team, and had already helped design the registry program, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serving in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice after the September 11 attacks. But the program was abandoned in 2011 after it was deemed redundant by Homeland Security and denounced by civil rights groups for unfairly targeting immigrants from Muslim-majority nations.

• Steve Bannon: was appointed as White House chief strategist by Trump. This raised many criticisms, as politicians and commentators argued that he harbored sympathies for white nationalist arguments and rhetoric. Organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League condemned him for 'aggressively pushing stories against immigrants' and his association with 'unabashed anti-Semites and racists'. Bannon is the former executive chairman of far-right Breitbart News, and was Trump’s campaign chief from August through election day. A story from the Politico claims that 'depending how Bannon shapes it, Breitbart could become the closest thing the United States has ever had to a "state-run media enterprise", to quote a phrase by a former Breitbart spokesman'.

• Reince Priebus: Trump announced that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus would become his chief of staff. When asked, Priebus said he was 'not going to rule out anything' when it came to banning Muslim immigration, but seemed to suggest that such a ban would not explicitly prohibit Muslims outright. In an interview on ABC’s 'This Week.', he said of Islam: 'Clearly there are some aspects of that faith that are problematic and we know them; we’ve seen it'.

• Frank Gaffney: the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both reported on November 15th that counterjihad activist Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, would be advising the Trump transition team, although Gaffney denied it the following day.

• Clare Lopez: vice president of the Center for Security Policy, is reportedly being considered as Trump's deputy national security adviser. Lopez believes that 'infiltration [of the U.S. government by the Muslim Brotherhood] is obviously very deep and very broad within the bureaucracy, not just the top level, but throughout the federal system, including the intelligence community.'

• Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn: was named to be White House national security adviser, elevating the controversial surrogate to be the chief arbiter of virtually every major defense and foreign policy decision. He had been forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 after 30 years of his military career. According to Politico, this 'signals the president-elect’s intention to wage an aggressive war on terrorism — possibly without the diplomatic and cultural sensitivities that have been the hallmark of President Barack Obama’s approach, which Flynn has repeatedly criticized'. Flynn's views on Islam appear to be very much hard-lined: in the past he has argued that 'Islam is a political ideology,' and Islamism a 'vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people' that needs to be 'excised'. . In a recent book co-authored with conservative scholar Michael Ledeen, Flynn wrote against 'political correctness' and accused Obama of having failed to recognize 'the war being waged against us.'

'This administration has forbidden us to describe our enemies properly and clearly: they are Radical Islamists. They are not alone, and are allied with countries and groups who, though not religious fanatics, share their hatred of the West, particularly the United States and Israel. Those allies include North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela.'

• Mike Pompeo: a congressman from Kansas, is reportedly planned to be nominated for CIA director. He is a prominent critic of the nuclear deal between the US and Iran, and has already promised to undo it when in power. He has called Edward Snowden a 'traitor' who should be 'given a death sentence' for having leaked National Security Agency secrets. He criticized a 2014 Senate report that found certain CIA interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, to be unconstitutional, and has opposed Obama’s plans to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison. He has also expressed many Islamophobic views, such as accusing Muslim leaders of being 'potentially complicit' in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the accusation as 'false and irresponsible.'

• Mike Huckabee: The former Arkansas governor, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and Southern Baptist minister has been reported as likely to be Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a known proponent of Christian Zionism. His views on Islam also resemble those of other members. In 2015, he called on President Obama to resign as he, along with Hillary Clinton, 'served as apologists for radical Islamic terrorists' and was supposedly more concerned with attacking Republicans than defeating ISIS.

• Mike Flynn: called Islamism a "vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people" that has to be "excised" during an August speech.

Affiliations

• Frank Gaffney