Trumped

Campaign Manager Doesn’t Deny Trump May Have Violated Cuba Embargo

“I think they paid money, as I understand from the story, they paid money in 1998,” Kellyanne Conway said.
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By Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

Throughout the presidential election, the business dealings of Donald Trump’s namesake for-profit company have remained shrouded in mystery as a result of the Republican nominee refusing to release his tax returns. Still, that hasn’t stopped reporters from investigating the Trump Organization, revealing countless potential conflicts of interest around the world, and the billionaire’s private family foundation, uncovering evidence of potentially illegal “self-dealing.” Now, with less than six weeks until the presidential election, the Trump campaign is facing a host of new allegations about whether the candidate broke the U.S. embargo with Cuba in the late 1990s.

In another bombshell Newsweek exposé published Thursday, Kurt Eichenwald reports that Trump’s company, then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (now a subsidiary of Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises), allegedly paid for at least $68,000 in corporate expenditures in Havana, in 1998, when it sent a consulting firm there to explore possible business opportunities. Executives at the firm advised Trump Hotels that the business trip, which was illegal at the time, could be passed off as a charitable effort, Eichenwald reports, circumventing the embargo. At the time, several European companies had been in touch with Trump about a joint investment in Cuba, according to one former Trump Organization executive. With political pressure building to resume diplomatic relations, Trump was reportedly looking to get his foot in the door should the U.S. lift its embargo.

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Neither the Trump Organization nor Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp., the firm that traveled to Cuba on Trump’s behalf, responded to *Newsweek’*s request for comment. But in an interview Thursday morning with The View, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway seemed to confirm that the venture had occurred. “I think they paid money, as I understand from the story, they paid money in 1998,” she said. Conway denied that the Trump Organization had done anything treasonous, suggesting that the hotel itself never spent money in Cuba and Trump did not invest there. “The question is did he spend money. He is very critical of Cuba. He is very critical of Castro and he gave a speech the very next year to the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami critical of those who want to do business with Castro and he has talked about the Cuban embargo even on this show,” Conway said. “But again, we are talking about did his hotel spend money in 1998 in Cuba? No.” (The statute of limitations for the allegations against Trump in the Newsweek story have reportedly expired.)

Hillary Clinton’s campaign was quick to comment. “Trump’s business with Cuba appears to have broken the law, flouted U.S. foreign policy, and is in complete contradiction to Trump’s own repeated, public statements that he had been offered opportunities to invest in Cuba but passed them up,” Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s senior policy adviser, wrote in a statement. “This latest report shows once again that Trump will always put his own business interest ahead of the the national interest—and has no trouble lying about it,” he added.

Even Republican senator Marco Rubio, who has endorsed Trump, jumped on the report. “I hope the Trump campaign is going to come forward and answer some questions about this, because if what the article says is true—and I’m not saying that it is, we don’t know with one hundred percent certainty—I’d be deeply concerned about it. I would,” the former Trump rival said on the ESPN/ABC Capital Gains podcast.