While we’re on the subject of what presidents are allowed to do vis a vis the Constitution — say, can a president lead a coup is one such that is currently being given very serious and/or little consideration — we turn once again to something the Constitution is very clear on but the courts didn’t do jack shit.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Thursday released a report on some of the money Donald Trump’s businesses made by serving foreign interests during his “presidency,” revealing that Trump took in at least $7.8 million from “foreign governments and government-backed entities from 20 countries” from the day he was inaugurated until the day he had to leave, even though he was pretty sure he was still president then.
The Oversight Committee Dems, who don’t even seem to realize they aren’t in power in the House so how can they publish anything, wrote that the partial records they were able to obtain “demonstrate that four Trump-owned properties together collected, at the least, millions of dollars in payments from foreign governments and officials,” which probably violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, at least if anyone’s paying attention.
That quaint old document written by men in wigs and funny pants, forbids presidents from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional permission. That had generally been understood to exclude doing businesses with foreigns, too, but you see it didn’t apply to Donald Trump because nobody stopped him, that’s the law.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), the top Democrat on the committee, said the report “sets forth the records showing foreign government money — and all the spoils from royals we can find — pouring into hotels and buildings that the President continued to own during his presidency, all in direct violation of the Constitutional prohibition.”
But because the documents the committee had access to were limited, the report acknowledges it probably covers “only a small fraction” of the total Trump received from the aforesaid potentates and their retainers.
Despite the big impressive pile of folders with nothing in them Trump showed off that one time, the report says Trump remained in control of his businesses, like his hotel in Washington where all the foreign visitors stayed and rented the priciest rooms to show they were serious about democracy too. Lotsa money from China, around $5.6 million from the hotel in Washington, his other one in Las Vegas, and Trump Tower in New York. What’s that Last Month Sean Hannity? “Imagine what the media and how the country and the Left in this country would be reacting if Donald Trump and the Trump Organization or the Trump family were making tens of millions of dollars from our top geopolitical foes like China and Russia”?
Saudi Arabia came in a distant second, spending $615,000 at Trump properties — again that we know of — and that’s not even including their investment fund giving Jared a couple billion to play with while Trump was trying to do a coup. No rentals of bone saws, though!
The report recommends that Congress ought to do something to prevent future presidents — like any who might be elected within the next year — from such shenanigans ever again, like having an actual process for presidents to ask Congress for permission like the Constitution says, as well as some way of just finding out what kind of foreign sums are going to a president.
We would like to thank Mr. Raskin and his colleagues for their hard work, which in a reality not constructed by a meth-fueled computer simulation would result in serious reforms.
OPEN THREAD!
[CBS News / White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump / WaPo]
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Open Thread Chat Jan. 4. From the Cleveland Museum of Art. Their version of Rodin's The thinker was damaged on March 24, 1970 after dynamite was placed at it's base. No one was ever arrested. But it makes the piece more interesting in my opinion. https://www.clevelandart.org/research/library/how-to-research/rodins-the-thinker/vandalized
My photograph.
https://substack.com/chat/1783367/post/23e76a52-f293-4507-9ce8-87dc0e799faf
I once found a lost iPhone in a government building that was my duty station at the time.
After figuring out how to unlock it, I determined the name of the owner, scrolled through the contacts until I found an obvious relative, called them, and let them know where the phone was.
When the owner arrived, she offered me a pack of Marlboro lights for my trouble, which I refused because the cigarettes had a nominal value greater than $10 and if I accepted them, the ethics lawyers would screw me into the ground like a tent peg and that would be the end of me.
But this fuck took eight times as much cash as I saw in the Federal Reserve museum and nothing.