Really, this isn’t hard.

I may scream if I read another major media story about ‘possible’ conflicts of interest in the Trump family.

Yes, there are conflicts of interest.  This isn’t a question.  You cannot serve two masters.  If you work for, say, both the federal government and a clothing company, those two entities cannot have the same interests in every situation.  That’s what the phrase “Conflict of Interest” means.

The bigger question is how you deal with it when you hit a conflict.  That’s the open question here.  Not “Is there a conflict?”  They haven’t divested themselves of any of their holdings or interests.  The question is “What are you doing about the conflicts that exist?”

The minimum answer is to represent one side, and (by necessity) abandon the other.  You can’t ethically represent both.  I say it’s the minimum because that answer is hard to do, hard to prove, and isn’t usually even possible.

Suppose you make money from clothing, real estate, and naming rights.  “Making money” means you have a financial interest.  If you then do something somewhere else that raises their values — or lowers them; doesn’t matter — you have a conflict that hasn’t gone away.  The best you could try to claim was that you didn’t let that conflict of interest affect your decision for one of the interests.  Good luck making the case, though.

And, except for Trump himself, having an unresolved conflict of interest when you’re making federal financial decisions is illegal.  Hugely illegal.  This isn’t a quiet “I wanted to spend more time with my family” resignation, we’re talking about a “long jail sentence and ruined career” felony.

And no, not taking a salary doesn’t remove the conflict.  All that relieves you of are the disclosure requirements.   You would still go to jail for acting in bad faith in just the same way, with the same sentence.  You cannot serve two masters.

What I can’t figure out is why the press is soft-pedaling the COI question.  They know all this stuff already, and in painstaking detail.  They have to work around their own conflicts all the time.  This isn’t news (har har) to them.

So what, exactly, are they afraid of?