The question of who is paying for the family members’ participation — and whether American taxpayers will be on the hook — has emerged as an unresolved subplot, with newspapers in Scotland and London scouring State Department databases and reporting on the fancy hotels and expensive limousines contracted by the U.S. government…

“Questions surrounding the family on this trip come from Trump’s decision not to divest from his business and hiring Ivanka and Jared,” said John Wonderlich, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government advocacy group that has sought to document potential conflicts of interest for the Trump family.

“It’s not utterly inappropriate for family members to be involved in a state dinner, but are they trying to show they are united and that the business and family interests are the same?” Wonderlich said. “We’re always left in doubt about what their intentions are. You can’t say it’s just a family.”