Meanwhile, the New York Times reports: "Trump is considering formally turning over the operational responsibility for his real estate company to his two adult sons, but he intends to keep a stake in the business and resist calls to divest, according to several people briefed on the discussions."
If Trump merely turns his businesses over to family members (never mind whether he keeps a stake), it will not remove the potential for conflicts or even corruption.
His family could stand to benefit from his policy decisions, or alternatively, other entities could seek to curry favour with the new president through deals that benefit his businesses, and by extension, his family (or himself, if he keeps a stake). Ethics experts believe only putting his interests into a genuine blind trust, via the liquidation of his assets, would truly remove the possibility of conflicts.
But, now that this looks unlikely to happen, what needs to be emphasised is not simply that such conflicts are very real possibilities, though that's important. It also matters greatly that our lack of knowledge of the full range and scope of his interests makes it hard to evaluate whetherthese conflicts are taking place in any given situation, and if so, what they truly mean. And that's where the new Journal story comes in. Here is the rub of the matter:
"None of the 96 LLCs examined by the Journal appear to regularly release audited financial statements. That opacity - compounded by Mr Trump's decision to break with decades of precedent by declining to release his tax returns - makes it impossible to gauge the full extent of potential conflicts between his business interests and presidential role.
"The scope and complexity of Mr Trump's private business holdings is unprecedented for incoming presidents," said Norman Eisen, President Barack Obama's former White House ethics lawyer. 'We've never seen anything like this,' he said.
"It's not clear how much Mr Trump's businesses would benefit from his proposal to cut business tax rates ...
"Mr Trump's wealth is impossible to measure with precision. His financial disclosure form isn't externally audited and - following government rules - often uses bands, such as more than US$50 million, rather than exact amounts to report assets and revenue or income. Only a handful of the hundreds of entities listed in Mr Trump's financial disclosure publish audited financial statements - and those figures don't necessarily illuminate Mr Trump's financial situation."
Trump has called for huge tax cuts, including for top earners and businesses, and Congressional Republicans are all but certain to go forward with the same. But, as the Journal points out, we cannot know what impact these policies will have on Trump's own businesses - or his family's.
Noah Bookbinder, the executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tells me that this captures a key aspect of the broader problem here. Bookbinder says:
"We still have not seen his tax returns or a comprehensive account of his business interests. So we don't fully know what effect his policy proposals - including his tax policy proposals - will have on his financial interests or his family's bottom line. The fact that the Trump family would profit at all is a huge problem. But we can't know the scope of those profits unless we get a full accounting of what these interests are."
And this underscores again that Congressional Republicans could be taking specific steps to try to compel Trump to show more transparency about the full scope and range of his interests - if they wanted to.
If Trump does fail to do anything more than transfer his businesses to his family - or, worse, does so while retaining an interest himself - the likely abdication of Congressional Republicans in trying to compel more transparency should be seen as a big part of this story.