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Emoluments Probe Concludes Trump Used DC Hotel to Enrich Himself, Fleece Taxpayers While President
"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."
Oct 18, 2024
Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Friday published a staff report detailing how, while in office, former U.S. President Donald Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—used his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to enrich himself with hundreds of illegal or questionable payments from federal and state officials, job-seekers, and presidential pardon recipients.
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.
"Trump has used the presidency—and his yearslong pursuit of it—as the world's greatest get-rich-quick scheme."
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 Dreamsreported 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."
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The Corrupt Right-Wing Supreme Court Is the Cancer at the Heart of US Democracy
Republicans on the Supreme Court, 5 of the 6 appointed by presidents who lost the national vote, are the main reason why Americans can’t have nice things.
Aug 29, 2024
Republicans have pulled off a coup against an entire branch of government, and nobody seems to have noticed. But if you pay attention, it’s shocking.
Sometimes you can learn as much from attending to what Republicans suddenly stop saying as from what they are talking about. In this case, it’s their half-century-long obsession with convening a constitutional convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. Under Article V of our Constitution, when two-thirds of the states formally call for a “con-con” to rewrite our nation’s founding document, it officially comes into being.
They can then make small changes like enshrining the right of billionaires and corporations to bribe judges and politicians, or insert the doctrine of corporate personhood into the document, or simply throw the whole thing out and start over. Many on the right are hoping to insert a national ban on abortion into a new constitution; others want to end the right of women to vote, do away with all antidiscrimination laws, outlaw labor unions, or return the selection of senators to the states.
So far, 19 Republican-controlled states have signed on to a call for for a convention under Article V. The project, heavily funded by righ-twing billionaires, even has its own website: conventionofstates.com. Consider just a sampling of recent GOP supporters of the project:
- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “One of the things I’m going to do on my first day in office is I will put the prestige and power of the presidency behind a constitutional convention of the states.”
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: “We need a Convention of States to restore the rule of law in America.”
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “An Article V Convention of States is the best way to bring power back to the states and the people.”
- Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas): “We need to go back to our founding document, back to our Constitution, and put the restraints on Congress that our founders intended.”
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “An Article V Convention of States is a powerful tool given to us by the founders to rein in the federal government.”
- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.): “I’m a big fan of the Convention of States project. I think it’s the solution to Washington’s overreach.”
But over the past year, Republicans have suddenly fallen silent on the issue. Project 2025, for example, the all-encompassing wish-list for the GOP and its billionaire owners, lacks even one single mention of a constitutional convention.
Why would this be?
The simple and obvious answer is that Republicans are rewriting the Constitution right now, this year and last, through their proxies among the six corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Having succeeded in seizing the court, the GOP has been able to relax about their plan to call a convention. So far, just in the past two years, Republicans on the court have taken an ax to the Constitution. They have:
- Turned presidents who are inclined to break the law into kings or monarchs who are no longer accountable to police, courts, or juries, essentially rewriting Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
- Ended the constitutional rights of women to their own bodies, ignoring or rewriting the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.
- Gutted the power of federal agencies to protect consumers and our environment, essentially rewriting Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.
- Fully legalized the bribery of politicians so long as the bribes are paid after the deed is done (making it a “tip”) rather than before (which the court said would still be a bribe) overriding multiple constitutional prohibitions on bribery.
- Overturned parts of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act to legalize racially discriminatory gerrymandering where it benefits Republicans.
- Rewritten the Second Amendment and legalized bump stocks to put functionally fully-automatic weapons of war on our streets.
And, it appears, they’re just getting warmed up. Next year could see an end to gay marriage, contraception for single people, the abortion pill, the right to possess pornography (which they get to define) or read “banned” books, any meaningful regulation of billionaire-owned social media, further gutting of union rights, and the insertion of religion into schools nationwide… among other things.
Given how radical and willing they are to overturn established law, constitutional doctrine, and to create new law or constitutional doctrine out of thin air, it’s easy to see why Republicans would shift their efforts away from trying to rewrite the Constitution and toward supporting their shills on the court.
This has not gone unnoticed by U.S. President Joe Biden and his Democratic colleagues. Last month, when the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that presidents can commit crimes without consequences if they call them “official acts,” President Biden spoke out with an uncharacteristic ferocity:
This decision today has continued the court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation.
Two weeks later, The Washington Post reported:
President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.
With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, and the House still under the control of extremist Republicans under Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), it appears that President Biden’s Supreme Court agenda has receded into the background.
But Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should be (and almost certainly are) putting considerable attention and work into how to restrain the Supreme Court from doing further violence to our constitutional system of government once they’re in office.It must be, in fact, their first order of business, for two major reasons.
The first is that several of the rulings by Republicans on the court have had the effect of amplifying and solidifying Republican control over the nation. By single-handedly overturning the voting rights act and legalizing bribery by billionaires, they’ve created a political imbalance that fails to represent the people of our country and instead just does what their favorite billionaires and giant corporations want.
As Michael Moore reports, multiple polls have found in recent years:
- 90% of Americans want stronger gun control laws.
- 89% want an end to partisan and racial gerrymandering.
- 84% want free pre-kindergarten.
- 79% want the morbidly rich and corporations to pay their damn taxes.
- 76% want a higher minimum wage.
- 73% want an end to student debt and free college.
- 72% want action on the climate crisis and money out of politics.
- 71% want an end to union-busting.
- 70% want marijuana legalized nationwide.
- 69% want to maintain gay marriage and abortion rights.
- 65% want to end the electoral college and put term limits on SCOTUS justices.
None of these things are happening because of the Republican lock on the Supreme Court, the third and unelected branch of government which is today only beholden to whichever billionaire offers individual members the best gifts, goodies, and expensive vacations.
Had the actual winners of the national vote become president in 2000 and 2016, the only Republican on the court today would be Clarence Thomas, and America would be a very different nation.
Instead, we’ve had two illegitimate Republican presidents who essentially packed the court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was clear about why she cast the tie-breaking vote to hand the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000: She told friends she didn’t want her replacement to be chosen by Al Gore. And, of course, Donald Trump would never have become president without help from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
These Republicans on the Supreme Court, 5 of the 6 appointed by presidents who lost the national vote, are the main reason why Americans can’t have nice things—from a national healthcare system to free college to a functioning democracy that does what the majority of its citizens want—like every other democracy in the world.
The second reason Harris and Walz should be preparing to act immediately after they’re sworn into office on January 20 of next year (G-d willing!) is that a president’s power is at its peak the moment she takes office. After that, it’s largely downhill, as opposition politicians and the press pile on and even members of their own party begin to highlight cracks in the new administration’s policy chops.
This is why FDR, LBJ, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Bidenall got so much done in their first 100 days. If they hadn’t started out with their top and most controversial priorities, they never would have been able to get to them.
And, because the cancer at the heart of our democracy is currently centered in the Supreme Court, it’s why President Harris and Gov. Walt must focus their energy and political capital on taking on this out-of-control Supreme Court’s power as soon as they take office.
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The House Must Reject the Senate’s KOSA Internet Censorship Bill
The members of Congress who vote for this bill should remember—they do not, and will not, control who will be in charge of punishing bad internet speech.
Aug 01, 2024
The Senate just passed a bill that will let the federal and state governments investigate and sue websites that they claim cause kids mental distress. It’s a terrible idea to let politicians and bureaucrats decide what people should read and view online, but the Senate passed KOSA on a 91-3 vote.
Bill proponents have focused on some truly tragic stories of loss, and then tied these tragedies to the internet. But anxiety, eating disorders, drug abuse, gambling, tobacco and alcohol use by minors, and the host of other ills that KOSA purports to address all existed well before the internet.
The Senate vote means that the House could take up and vote on this bill at any time. The House could also choose to debate its own, similarly flawed, version of KOSA. Several members of the House have expressed concerns about the bill.
The vast majority of speech that KOSA affects is constitutionally protected in the U.S., which is why there is a long list of reasons that KOSA is unconstitutional.
The members of Congress who vote for this bill should remember—they do not, and will not, control who will be in charge of punishing bad internet speech. The Federal Trade Commission, majority-controlled by the president’s party, will be able to decide what kind of content “harms” minors, then investigate or file lawsuits against websites that host that content.
Politicians in both parties have sought to control various types of internet content. One bill sponsor has said that widely used educational materials that teach about the history of racism in the U.S. causes depression in kids. Kids speaking out about mental health challenges or trying to help friends with addiction are likely to be treated the same as those promoting addictive or self-harming behaviors, and will be kicked offline. Minors engaging in activism or even discussing the news could be shut down, since the grounds for suing websites expand to conditions like “anxiety.”
KOSA will lead to people who make online content about sex education, and LGBTQ+ identity and health, being persecuted and shut down as well. Views on how, or if, these subjects should be broached vary widely across U.S. communities. All it will take is one member of the Federal Trade Commission seeking to score political points, or a state attorney general seeking to ensure re-election, to start going after the online speech his or her constituents don’t like.
All of these speech burdens will affect adults, too. Adults simply won’t find the content that was mass-deleted in the name of avoiding KOSA-inspired lawsuits; and we’ll all be burdened by websites and apps that install ID checks, age gates, and invasive (and poorly functioning) software content filters.
The vast majority of speech that KOSA affects is constitutionally protected in the U.S., which is why there is a long list of reasons that KOSA is unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the lawmakers voting for this bill have hand-waved away those concerns. They’ve also blown off the voices of millions of young people who will have their free expression constricted by this bill, including the thousands who spoke to EFF directly about their concerns and fears around KOSA.
We can’t rely solely on lawsuits and courts to protect us from the growing wave of anti-speech internet legislation, with KOSA at its forefront. We need to let the people making the laws know that the public is becoming aware of their censorship plans—and won’t stand for them.
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