oes it even matter any more that, on Monday, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had another televised nutty in the White House? Does it matter more that, in the course of his televised nutty, the president* expressed virulent contempt for the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect, and defend. I mean, I was sitting there when he did it. I had to sit through that awful Roger Corman film of an inaugural address. Did I do that for naught?
Anyway, on Monday, the president* unburdened himself of the following thought-like objects.
On the war on terror:
“I’m the one who did the capturing. I’m the one who knows more about it than you people or fake pundits.”
On the whistleblower:
“I happen to think there probably wasn’t an informant. You know, the informant went to the whistleblower, the whistleblower had, you know, second-and-third-hand information. So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff!”
And then, the piece de resistance, in which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison become operatives of The Deep State…
“You people with this phony emoluments clause.”
I know he burbled on about George Washington and Barack Obama and Netflix and how unprecedented it is that he’s not taking a salary. (Herbert Hoover didn’t, nor did JFK.) But I think I briefly went to another place when he said that thing about the Emoluments Clause. How about the Bill of Rights?How about the powers of Congress?How about the impeachment provisions? What other parts of the Constitution does he consider “phony”?
Who cares about emoluments? Not President Trump, that’s for sure.
During a Cabinet meeting Monday, Trump defended his now-reversed decision to host the 2020 Group of Seven Summit at the Trump National Doral Miami resort. While on a tangent, the president hand-waved the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the federal government from receiving gifts or titles from foreign states without the consent of Congress. Trump described it as “phony,” making it unclear if he’s aware that it’s in the Constitution of the United States.
President Trump at the White House lashed out at having to reverse himself on the G7 being at Trump Doral.
He said: “You people with this phony Emoluments Clause."
Note: The emoluments clause is a provision of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8).
He also reportedly argued he wouldn’t have profited off the summit, world leaders deserved the best hospitality possible, and other presidents “ran their businesses” while in office, which actually hasn’t been the case since former President Andrew Johnson left office.
Trump kept saying in cabinet meeting that "George Washington ran his business" while in office. (His business was a plantation with slave labor, for the record.)
President Donald Trump reacted angrily Saturday to criticism of his administration announcing it would hold a summit of foreign leaders at a resort Trump owns.
“I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders,” Trump said Saturday night.
Trump went on to praise the features of his resort like “tremendous ballrooms” and claimed again that he would not “profit” from the summit.
I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders. It is big, grand, on hundreds of acres, next to MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, has tremendous ballrooms & meeting rooms, and each delegation would have…
…..its own 50 to 70 unit building. Would set up better than other alternatives. I announced that I would be willing to do it at NO PROFIT or, if legally permissible, at ZERO COST to the USA. But, as usual, the Hostile Media & their Democrat Partners went CRAZY!
“Doral is right on the Miami airport flight paths,” Todd said. “I think one of my reporters told me there’s like 20 different flight paths that are going to have to be diverted.”
“This is such a security nightmare to put it in the middle of a neighborhood where you’re going to have the neighbors coming and going,” Fahrenthold said.
The Department of Justice has adopted a narrow interpretation of a
law meant to bar foreign interests from corrupting federal officials,
giving Saudi Arabia, China and other countries leeway to curry favor
with Donald Trump via deals with his hotels, condos, trademarks and golf courses, legal and national security experts say.
The so-called foreign emoluments clause was intended to curb
presidents and other government officials from accepting gifts and
benefits from foreign governments unless Congress consents.
But in a forthcoming article in the Indiana Law Journal, the Washington University Law professor Kathleen Clark reveals justice department filings have recently changed tack. The new interpretation, Clark says, is contained in justice filings responding to recent lawsuits lodged by attorneys generals and members of Congress.
Clark’s article notes that in more than 50 legal opinions over some
150 years justice department lawyers have interpreted the clause in a
way that barred any foreign payments or gifts except for ones Congress
approved. But filings by the department since June 2017 reveal a new
interpretation that “… would permit the president – and all federal
officials – to accept unlimited amounts of money from foreign
governments, as long as the money comes through commercial transactions
with an entity owned by the federal official,” the professor writes.
The justice department stance now closely parallels arguments made in
a January 2017 position paper by Trump Organization lawyer Sheri Dillon
and several of her law partners. On 11 January 2017, just days before
he was sworn in, Dillon said Trump isn’t accepting any payments in his
“official capacity” as president, as the income is only related to his
private business. “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present,
and it has nothing to do with an office,” Dillon said.
That goes against what many experts believe.
“For over a hundred years, the justice department has strictly
interpreted the constitution’s anti-corruption emoluments clause to
prohibit federal officials from accepting anything of value from foreign
governments, absent congressional consent,” Clark told the Guardian.
“In 2017, the department reversed course, adopting arguments nearly
identical to those put forward by Trump’s private sector lawyers.
Instead of defending the republic against foreign influence, the
department is defending Trump’s ability to receive money from foreign
governments,” Clark added.
A justice department spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to
its filings in the emoluments lawsuits which Clark has noted contain
five arguments similar to those used by Trump’s business lawyers. Among
the key justice arguments is that the foreign emoluments clause only was
intended to prohibit the president accepting gifts and employment
compensation from a foreign government, but allows him to benefit from
what it calls “commercial transactions”.
Other legal scholars also voice strong qualms about the justice
department’s current position on emoluments and criticize the
administration’s lax attitude about conflicts involving Trump and his
business empire.
“The heart of the matter is that these are clauses meant to guard
against undue foreign influence and conflicts of interest,” John
Mikhail, a professor at Georgetown Law Center, said.
Two attorneys general from the District of Columbia and Maryland have
filed lawsuits arguing the Trump International Hotel in Washington,
where numerous foreign and state delegations have stayed or hosted
events, has violated the anti corruption clauses. Some 200 members of
Congress have also filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump has conflicts of
interest in at least 25 countries.
The inspector general at the General Services Administration, which
oversees the government-owned Old Post Office building leased by the
Trump International Hotel, has faulted the agency for “improperly
ignoring (the) emoluments clauses” and for conflicts of interest
involving the hotel while Trump is in office.
Former intelligence officials also expressed concerns. “There’s a
perception among lobbyists for foreign governments that the White House
is for sale,” said Robert Baer, a 21 year CIA veteran with a Middle East
background. “It’s a counter intelligence nightmare.”
The Trump Organization did pledge that while Trump was president it
would donate any profits from foreign entities to the treasury. To that
end it has written checks for $342,000 to the government covering the
years 2017 and 2018. But some ethics watchdogs have questioned the
methodology for calculating these payments, arguing it doesn’t account
for foreign revenues to Trump businesses which overall have had yearly
losses.
Further critics note that while Trump opted to let his two sons run
his real estate businesses, and pledged he would not be involved with it
as long as he was president, he has not been shy about publicly touting
his properties including his Scottish golf course.
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chief focus of critics and the emolument lawsuits has been the Trump
International Hotel which has become a mini mecca for numerous foreign
delegations – including ones from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey and the
Philippines – who have used it for overnight stays and various
meetings.
The hotel is leased from the GSA for 60 years and located on
Pennsylvania Avenue just a few blocks from the White House. The IG’s
report this January said the lease should have been reviewed again with
Trump’s election to determine if it was in violation of the emoluments
clause.
Critics of Trump’s ongoing ties to the Trump International and his
business empire also note that some countries with major political and
business problems in Washington have frequented his properties. “It
appears that President Trump may be benefiting from foreign use of his
properties designed to influence his decisions,” said the former
Republican congressman Mickey Edwards.
For instance, a 60-person Malaysian government delegation stayed at
Trump International in the fall of 2017 at a time when the justice
department was conducting a major corruption investigation of Malaysian
officials including the then prime minister, Najib Razak, who had a
White House meeting with Trump during their stay, as first reported by
radio station WAMU and Reveal.
Meanwhile, lobbyists for Saudi Arabia, which has aggressively courted
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, spent at least $270,000 at his DC
hotel after Trump won the election, booking 500 rooms over an estimated
three-month period, according to a Washington Post report.
Last March, a Saudi delegation traveling with the country’s Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman seemed to enjoy a lavish stay at Trump’s New
York hotel, which helped to reverse a two-year revenue decline at the
property, according to the Washington Post.
These foreign dealings with Trump hotels are exhibit A for many
critics of the weak kneed enforcement of the emoluments clause in the
Trump era.
“This administration gives off every appearance of turning the White
House into a giant cash register,” said Mikhail. “ Rather than drawing
bright lines between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration they seem intent on blurring those lines.”
The lawsuits have to wend their way through the courts – which could
see tough battles given mixed court rulings thus far. But critics in
Congress and outside are raising more questions about emoluments and
Trump’s business conflicts as new issues keep arising.
“Congress now must conduct independent oversight so the American
people can determine for themselves whether the President is acting in
our nation’s best interests or his own,” said congressman Elijah
Cummings, the chairman of the House committee on oversight and reform.
Mike Carpenter, who served on the National Security Council in the
Obama years, added: “When foreign powers patronize the president’s
businesses it creates an enormous national security risk.”
President Donald Trump spoke out on Monday about his call with the Saudi King to discuss allegations his government killed and dismembered Washington Post writer and dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn Monday, Trump repeatedly noted Saudi Arabia’s denial of alleged killing was “very strong,” even adding that Khashoggi could have been murdered by “rogue killers.”
“I just spoke with the King of Saudi Arabia, who denies any knowledge with what took place,” Trump said. “And he firmly denies that.”
Trump added that he has sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet with Saudi King Salman.
“The king firmly denied any knowledge of it, he didn’t really know, maybe, I don’t want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers,” Trump said. “Who knows, we’re going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon, but his was a flat denial.”
“He told me in a very firm way that they had no knowledge of it,” Trump continued. “He said it very strongly.”
“His denial to me could not have been stronger,” Trump added.
Turkish officials say they have proof that Khashoggi — missing since he entered the Saudi consulate on October 2 — was murdered by a team of Saudi agents. Trump has repeatedly stressed that the Saudis vehemently deny their involvement in his disappearance. In a tweet on Monday morning, he emphasized that U.S. resident Khashoggi is a “Saudi citizen,” and that King Salman “denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened.”
The disappearance and possible murder of Khashoggi poses a problem for Trump administration attempts to build a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia, notably through Jared Kushner‘s relationship with young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump & Saudi Business:
•1991: Sold yacht to Saudi Prince
•2001: Sold 45th floor of Trump World Tower to Saudis
•Jun 2015: I love the Saudis…many in Trump Tower
•Aug 2015: “They buy apartments from me…Spend $40M-$50M”
•2017: Saudi lobbyists spent $270K at Trump DC hotel
The U.S. government paid roughly $65,000 for housing and accommodations for staffers at President Trump’s Turnberry golf resort, The Scotsman reported Tuesday.
The news outlet, citing government spending records, found that the State Department paid roughly 52,000 pounds — or $65,000 — to SLC Turnberry Limited, which is registered with a company whose directors include Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
The government made an initial payment on July 11 for close to $30,000 that covered hotel rooms and a “VIP visit,” according to The Scotsman.
The other payment, approved on July 10, reportedly covered hotel accommodations at the golf resort.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Eric Trump responded to the news report on Twitter shortly after it was published, saying the company charges its costs related to any U.S. government business, and it does not profit from the visits.
“Much more would be spent if they stayed elsewhere,” he added.
The president spent last weekend at his property, where he played golf and sat for an interview with CBS News ahead of his trip to Finland to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Scotsman reported in May that the government had paid Trump’s Turnberry resort earlier in the year to accommodate visits from administration officials.
Trump roiled ethics watchdogs after his election when he refused to fully divest from his businesses. The then-president-elect instead placed his assets in a trust controlled by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
The latest payments are likely to ignite criticism from ethics watchdogs, who have long argued that the Trumps are using the presidency to enrich the family’s business empire.
Three separate lawsuits have been brought against the Trump administration claiming that the president is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits elected officials from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without congressional approval.
One lawsuit was dismissed in December, and the other two are working their way through the court system.
President Donald Trump has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause related to private payments from other governments.
Trump is asking the judge to dismiss the complaint against him as an individual.
He’s also being sued separately for violating the Emoluments Clause — which prohibits federal officeholders from receiving gifts and payments from foreign states or their representatives — in his official capacity as President.
Trump, in the new filing, claims the District of Columbia and Maryland state attorneys general suing him can only bring a court action like this against him as President.
Even if they could sue Trump as an individual, “the President still is absolutely immune,” according to the filing.
Previously, the judge let the lawsuit move forward and focused it on proceeds from the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Following that ruling, the case will challenge payments made by foreign officials for services at the Trump International Hotel but will not include visits to Mar-a-Lago in Florida or other Trump properties.
Maryland and DC have argued that the Trump International Hotel’s operations put other nearby hotel and entertainment properties at a competitive disadvantage and that the Trump hotel got special tax concessions.
But the judge did not make any rulings on the allegations in the case, which accuse Trump of taking illegal gifts from foreign governments through his family’s business.
The court is still weighing the definition of emoluments and other questions raised in the lawsuit.
The Kushner and Trump families have both been in New York real estate for decades.
But until relatively recently, they didn’t work together on large projects.
That appears to be changing with a new Jeresy Shore development led by the Kushners, which the New York Times is reporting will have at least one hotel managed by the Trumps. According to the Times, there is a signed letter of intent.
“The long-running talks blur the line between family, business and politics in ways that lack precedent: Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, retain financial interests in their family businesses,” the Times writes. “The Trump Organization’s outside ethics adviser has raised questions about a potential deal—one reason the two-year-long discussions have not been completed.”
The report quotes an ethics advisor who points out that this conflict of interest may be the reason Trump hasn’t pushed his son-in-law out of the White House, despite Kushner losing his top-secret security clearance and reports that other nations were looking to exploit his massive debt load in negotiations.
“The concern is that the president might not want to do anything that would upset the Kushner family agreement to do business with his company,” said the ethics advisor.
The story goes on to detail all the places the Kushners have borrowed money and to discuss the rarely used emoluments clause of the Constitution.
The Trump Organization said Monday it has made good on the president’s promise to donate profits from foreign government spending at its hotels to the U.S. Treasury, but neither the company nor the government disclosed the amount or how it was calculated.
Watchdog groups seized on the lack of detail as another example of the secrecy surrounding President Donald Trump’s pledges to separate his administration from his business empire.
“There is no independent oversight or accountability. We’re being asked to take their word for it,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Most importantly, even if they had given every dime they made from foreign governments to the Treasury, the taking of those payments would still be a problem under the Constitution.”
Trump Organization Executive Vice President and Chief Compliance Counsel George Sorial said in a statement to The Associated Press that the donation was made on Feb. 22 and includes profits from Jan. 20 through Dec. 31, 2017. The company declined to provide a sum or breakdown of the amounts by country.
Sorial said the profits were calculated using “our policy and the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry” but did not elaborate. The U.S. Treasury confirmed receipt of the check, but did provide any details, including the amount.
Watchdog group Public Citizen questioned the spirit of the pledge in a letter to the Trump Organization earlier this month since the methodology used for donations would seemingly not require any donation from unprofitable properties receiving foreign government revenue.
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said that the lack of disclosure was unsurprising given that the Trump’s family businesses have “a penchant for secrecy and a readiness to violate their promises.”
“Did they pay with Monopoly money? If the Trump Organization won’t say how much they paid, let alone how they calculated it at each property, why in the world should we believe they actually have delivered on their promise?” Weissman said.
Ethics experts had already found problems with the pledge Trump made at a news conference held days before his inauguration because it didn’t include all his properties, such as his resorts, and left it up to Trump to define “profit.” The pledge was supposedly made to ameliorate the worry that Trump was violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans the president’s acceptance of foreign gifts and money without Congress’ permission.
Several lawsuits have challenged Trump’s ties to his business ventures and his refusal to divest from them. The suits allege that foreign governments’ use of Trump’s hotels and other properties violates the emoluments clause.
Trump’s attorneys have challenged the premise that a hotel room is an “emolument” but announced the pledge to “do more than what the Constitution requires” by donating foreign profits at the news conference. Later, questions emerged about exactly what this would entail.
An eight-page pamphlet provided by the Trump Organization to the House Oversight Committee in May said that the company planned to send the Treasury only profits obviously tied to foreign governments, and not ask guests questions about the source of their money because that would “impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand.”
“It’s bad that Trump won’t divest himself and establish a truly blind trust, and it’s worse that he won’t be transparent,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. He called the Republicans refusal to do oversight, such as subpoena documents, that would shed light on Trump’s conflicts of interest “unconscionable.”
Since Donald Trump took office in January, his presidency has been dogged by concerns about how he may be profiting off the executive office. Now, thanks to receipts obtained by the transparency group Property of the People via the Freedom of Information Act, there’s evidence that the White House’s National Security Council paid more than $1,000 for a two-night stay at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 3 and 4 of this year. Trump owns the resort, and the profits are stored in a trust managed by Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen H. Weisselberg that the president can pull funds from at any time. As a consequence, these receipts may be evidence of a violation of the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the president from receiving any compensation from federal, state, or local governments beyond the salary he earns as chief executive.
The Mar-a-Lago documents, which Property of the People obtained through the Coast Guard (a division of the Department of Homeland Security), show the National Security Council paid full price—the “rack rate”—for the rooms using a government travel charge card. The room cost $546 a night, according to the receipt. The Trump administration has at times referred to the Mar-a-Lago estate as the “Winter White House” or the “Southern White House.”
On Saturday, March 4, the second of the two days in question, President Trump was seen mingling at a lavish charity ball hosted by the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at Mar-a-Lago, where he reportedly had dinner earlier that evening with then Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, John Kelly, former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and White House counsel Don McGahn. This was Trump’s third visit to his Palm Beach golf estate since his inauguration in January and two days after Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into the president’s ties with Russia. Saturday, March 4, was also a prolific day for President Trump on Twitter; he found the time to lodge an unfounded claim that President Obama had wiretapped Trump’s office at the White House and take a jab at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “bad (pathetic) ratings” on the television show Trump used to host, Celebrity Apprentice.
The documents obtained by Property of the People also show that a government travel charge card was used to pay a March hotel bill at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas at a cost of $186. Trump himself owns 50 percent of the property. The documents also detail three February charges totaling $62, also paid by government card, at the restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The documents obtained by Property of the People further show that the U.S. Embassy paid $632 for four nights in June at the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Panama. Though Trump does not own this property, he collected more than $800,000 in fees from his Panamanian hotel management corporation, which he does own. That $632 bill was paid for with a government travel charge card. For competitive reasons, businesses do their best to keep the specifics of such licensing and management deals private, but court records have shown that Trump has struck deals connected to similar properties in which his payout was tied to the project’s success.
In February, the Washington Postreported that the State Department had spent $15,000 to rent 19 rooms at a Trump property in Vancouver shortly after Trump took office. That property isn’t directly owned by Donald Trump but rather by a Canadian company called the Holborn Group. Still, Trump makes money from licensing the Trump brand. According to his 2017 financial disclosure, which covers the period from January 2016 through April 2017, Trump earned $5 million in royalties from the Vancouver hotel.
Under the Domestic Emoluments Clause, “it doesn’t matter whether the benefit results from a payment made in the United States or outside it,” said Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center. “Likewise, any payment made to a business owned, in whole or in part, by the president raises serious questions under the clause because the president will ultimately enjoy a portion of any financial benefit these businesses receive.”
On June 14, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed a lawsuit against Trump for violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, is the lead plaintiff in that suit, and 200 additional members of Congress have also joined the case. The Foreign Emoluments Clause states that anyone holding office in the United States cannot accept any benefit or gift from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. But Congress can’t waive the Domestic Emoluments Clause, according to Gorod.
In addition to the Blumenthal lawsuit, the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland sued Trump over alleged emolument violations in June. The attorney general of Washington argues that the Trump International Hotel is taking away business from the taxpayer-owned convention center, as foreign embassies are opting to hold events and rent rooms at the Trump hotel instead. The Maryland attorney general likewise says Trump’s D.C. hotel is drawing business out of the state. And in January, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit accusing the president of violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause by accepting money from foreign governments at his Washington hotel. The CREW case is moving forward with oral arguments next month.
Ryan Shapiro, the co-founder of Property of the People, said, “We’re targeting government charge card records at numerous federal agencies.” He noted that while the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security were responsive with handing over federal records, others have been less forthcoming. Those less-responsive agencies, he said, “include the Secret Service, the State Department, the Department of Commerce, Customs and Border Patrol, the General Services Administration, and the Department of Defense.”
