On January 20th, an activist posted a petition at Whitehouse.gov demanding the following:
Immediately release Donald Trump’s full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance.
By Monday morning, the petition garnered 267,704 signers.
When creating the petition platform for the White House web site, Barack Obama set a policy that if a petition obtained 100,000 or more signatures within 30 days of creation, the White House would respond to it.
The Trump administration appears to have adopted the same policy according to the new White House Web site.
A respond from the Trump White House will be submitted within 60 days, bringing this issue to the forefront of the media once again.
Other petitions include one that requests Trump’s resignation for violating the Emoluments Clause, and another that demands Trump place all assets in a “blind trust.”
The blind trust petition already has 78,000 signers.
While there is expectation that any administration adopt the words of these petitions, they have set the expectation that the issue would be addressed.
Expect more ridiculous petitions to appear on the White House petition site in the coming days.