According to a report released Thursday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, Trump received money from over 20 foreign governments through his businesses while he was President.
As we all know from civics class, the Constitution prohibits any federal office holder, including the president, from accepting any payment or benefit from a state or foreign government.’
A federal judge in Maryland Monday took a dim view of this arrangement:
“You have foreign governments staying at Trump International, and they’re going there spending money precisely to get in good with him, which is a way to – in effect – influence him,” the judge said, asking the government’s attorney, “So the potential to look favorably upon is not enough to be an emolument?”
Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin said the report demonstrates that Trump clearly violated the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which he said prohibits the president from accepting money payments or gifts “‘of any kind whatever’ from foreign governments and monarchs unless he obtains ‘the Consent of the Congress’ to do so.”
“Yet Donald Trump, while holding the office of president, used his business entities to pocket millions of dollars from foreign states and royalty and never once went to Congress to seek its consent,” Raskin wrote.
Evidence shows that, in just one example, Saudi Arabia and its royal family spent at least $615,400 at Trump properties during Trump’s administration …and that at the same time, Trump inked an arms deal with the government worth more than $100 billion in 2017.