"Fact check: Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust during presidency"
Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust during the presidency – he didn't sell it. An expert told USA TODAY blind trusts allow someone to retain ownership of an asset while transferring management to another person or institution.
The sale happened after Carter left office, with considerable personal debts:
The Carters sold the peanut farm in March 1981, shortly after Carter left office following a failed bid for a second term. Years of drought and changes in warehouse management had left the Carters with more than $1 million of debt at that point...
I'm not sure a blind trust makes particular sense for a specific business as an isolation measure. Contrast with, say, an investment portfolio where management of the portfolio is completely handed over to an independent entity. In that case there's no direct managerial control over the individual investments themselves (save shareholder votes), and the contents of the trust can vary over time.
Putting an individual business in a trust strikes me as putting a single item in a bag and then into another bag. You're not abstracting or collectivising, only putting more packaging around it. Maybe there's some managerial distance, but everyone on both sides of that gap knows exactly who ultimately benefits.
(I'm not calling Carter corrupt. He's likely the least corrupt president the US has seen in 50--75 years. I'm saying that this specific measure, well-intentioned as it may have been, was rather empty. It's also immeasurably better than present practices, of course.)
