Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
The First Lady of New Jersey has embattled Sen. Bob Menendez’s seat in her sights—bringing the “blind trust” where she and Gov. Phil Murphy have stuffed their fabulous wealth into view.
Tammy Murphy, daughter of a Virginia car dealership dynasty and now an aspiring U.S. senator, faced a dilemma common to one-percenters in politics when her fellow Goldman Sachs alum hubby assumed the governor’s mansion in 2018: their vast financial holdings could represent a conflict-of-interest, given the huge powers and budgets the Garden State’s chief executive commands and the prominent role the First Lady plays in the state’s civic life. So the couple turned to an equally common solution: the “blind trust.”
And like former President Donald Trump, they decided the seeing-eye dog for their fortune should be family: in the Murphys’ case, the First Lady’s auto-hawking brother, Steve Snyder. Unlike Trump, though—whose own attorney admitted that his trust could never be “totally blind”—the Murphys have maintained this set-up insulates them from their investments.