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As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepared to take office in December 2016, multiple news reports addressed the potential conflicts of interest he would face as he transitioned from a businessman to chief executive. Many critics urged Trump to divest himself of his businesses and cited former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's sale of his peanut farm as an exemplary model of how to head off such potential conflicts: In May 2020, after an appeals court ruled that a lawsuit could proceed alleging that Trump had violated the constitution by receiving foreign money through his hotels, comparisons between Carter and Trump once again gained traction on social media: While Carter did place his businesses into a blind trust before he was elected president in 1977, he didn't actually sell his peanut farm until he left office in 1981. On Jan. 5, 1977, Carter released a plan detailing how his assets would be handled when he assumed office. Carter listed eight actions that he would take to avoid conflicts of interest, including transferring Carter's Warehouse, Carter Farms, and all funds related to those business ventures into a trust: Carter's business suffered significantly while he served as president, but it wasn't until he left office in 1981 that the decision was made to sell the family farm: In regards to a meme's claim that Carter was still building houses at the age of 92, that is, for the most part, true. Carter has been building houses with Habitat for Humanity since 1984. At the age of 92, he was still actively participating in the construction of new homes. The above-displayed meme is a few years old, however, as Carter is 95 years old at the time of this writing in May 2020. If the text of this meme was altered to give Carter's current age, it would still be true. In October 2019, shortly after suffering a fall at his home that required stitches, Carter was back on the construction site. A Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project has also been announced in the Dominican Republic for November 2020, but it's unclear if Carter will travel to the country to take part in the construction: In summary, Carter placed his peanut farm into a blind trust when he took office in 1977. It wasn't until he left office four years later that the farm was sold. With that in mind, we rate this claim Mixture.
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