The endless Trump grift
Brett Wilkins for Common Dreams
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| I'm guessing she doesn't care |
The report—titled Room Rates May Vary: How Donald
Trump Violated the Constitution by Fleecing Taxpayers With Unlawful and
Exorbitant Hotel Charges—was released by Rep. Jamie
Raskin (D-Md.), who in 2021 managed Trump's historic second
impeachment for inciting the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Offering "a glimpse into President Trump's domestic emoluments rackets," the publication accuses the former president of violating the Constitution's Domestic Emoluments Clause "as he used the Secret Service as his personal ATM and repeatedly took payments that raise the specter of pay-to-play corruption from individuals who sought and, in many cases obtained, favors from the commander-in-chief."
"From the time he became a candidate and launched his
campaign as ' the greatest infomercial in
political history,' Donald
Trump has used the presidency—and his yearslong pursuit of
it—as the world's greatest get-rich-quick scheme," the report states.
"Earlier this year, the Democratic staff of the
Committee on Oversight and Accountability released a staff report documenting
the nearly $8 million former President Trump received through just four of his
businesses and over just parts of a two-year period from at least 20 foreign
governments that sought—and in many cases received—favors from the Trump
administration," the report notes.
"This figure is clearly just a fraction of the total
amount of unconstitutional foreign emoluments President Trump collected while
in office—a total that still needs to be fully accounted for," the paper
contends.
As Common Dreams reported in
January, documents from Trump's former accounting firm reviewed by the
committee revealed that businesses owned by the former president received
payments from at least 20 foreign governments during his White House term,
including over $5.5 million from China, $615,422 from Saudi Arabia, $465,744
from Qatar, and $303,372 from Kuwait.
The new report continues:
This follow-up report is based on a single set of records: guest logs for a single Trump property, Donald Trump's Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., covering just an 11-month period between September 2017 and August 2018 (excluding July 2018). Thus, the results would presumably represent less than one-quarter of Trump's ill-gotten gains from a single hotel over the course of his four-year term. While this is an exceedingly small window into the opaque web of more than 500 corporations, limited liability companies, and trusts that Donald Trump carried with him into the presidency, it is enough to reveal hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments he accepted while in office from domestic sources—including a federal agency, numerous federal and state officials, and individuals who sought, and frequently obtained, federal offices as well as presidential pardons from him.
"The Constitution makes clear: Beyond a salary, the
president may not receive any additional payments from federal or state
governments," Raskin said in a statement. "This
is a non-waivable prohibition against exploiting the office to convert and
pocket public funds."
"While we still do not know the full extent of the
unconstitutional payments Trump pocketed while fleecing American taxpayers, one
thing is certain: We must put legal barriers in place now to prevent the kind
of ripoff corruption our Founding Fathers so strongly opposed," Raskin
added. "Given the need to enforce the U.S. Constitution against both
foreign and domestic emoluments corruption, in the coming days, I will work
with my Democratic colleagues on a legislative fix and hope that my Republican
colleagues will join us in this effort."
The report notes that "Trump was very clear that he did
not believe that the Constitution's prohibitions on either foreign or domestic
emoluments applied to him. For example, in 2019, when public outrage forced him
to reverse his plan to hold the following year's G7 summit at his 'foundering
Doral resort,' he publicly denigrated what he called the 'phony Emoluments
Clause.'"
"And far from expressing contrition for cashing in on
the presidency, Donald Trump has made explicit his intent to expand his
commodification of federal office if re-elected—including by gutting the
federal civil service and replacing professional, expert, nonpolitical federal
employees with a cadre of yes-men, sycophants, and loyalists," the paper
adds.
Raskin said that "Trump has made clear that
he will not only refuse to divest from his businesses in a possible future
presidency, but he will seek to multiply opportunities to commodify the Oval
Office for his personal enrichment by turning thousands of civil service jobs
into patronage positions—all with the attendant payoff possibilities from
supplicant job-seekers and the prospective blessing of his hand-picked Supreme
Court justices."
