Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
Donald Trump used the White House as his own personal cash register, drawing millions of dollars from foreign governments, clearly violating U.S. law, and raising questions about Trump's motivations for even seeking the presidency, according to reports at multiple news outlets. Could this lead to a fifth criminal indictment against Trump? That is just one of many troubling issues raised by this latest episode of Trump: Acting Above the Law.
The story started with reporting from The New York Times (NYT), under the headline "Trump Received Millions From Foreign Governments as President, Report Finds. The secondary headline also is illuminating: "House Democrats released evidence that he took in at least $7.8 million from foreign entities while in office, engaging in the kind of conduct the GOP is grasping to pin on President Biden." From a joint report at the NYT and Yahoo! News:
Donald Trump’s businesses received nearly $8 million in payments from foreign governments while Trump was president, according to new research by Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Unlike Republicans in their efforts to pin corruption on President Joe Biden, Democrats on the House oversight committee have receipts — more than 400 pages of them — that show payments to Trump’s businesses from foreign officials likely seeking to influence the U.S. government.
Trump refused to divest from his business empire when he became president, creating an opportunity for anyone hoping to win his favor to put money straight into his pocket by staying at his hotels.
“When he arrived in the White House, Trump was determined not only to keep this well-branded global corporate empire going but to seize a new and unprecedented opportunity to make it ever more lucrative for himself and his family,” the oversight committee’s Democratic staff, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), said in their report.
Democrats and nonpartisan ethics experts have long argued that Trump’s refusal to divest violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on presidents accepting gifts or “emoluments” from kings, princes or foreign states. Trump faced emoluments lawsuits, but the Supreme Court declared the cases moot after he left the White House in January 2021.
Meanwhile, since 2019, Democrats on the House oversight committee have sought records from Trump’s accounting firm reflecting his foreign income. After a federal court awarded access in 2022, Democrats said they’d found records reflecting more than $750,000 in payments from foreign officials at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C. Despite a court order requiring more material to be turned over, Republicans quietly shut down document production last year as they launched their quest for dirt on Biden.
Using documents obtained by the court order, plus already-public records, Democrats tallied $7.8 million in foreign payments from 20 countries during Trump’s presidency. Most of the sum came from Chinese sources, including China’s embassy in the U.S. and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a state-owned enterprise that leased property at Trump Tower in New York. Democrats suggest in their report that the payments from ICBC could have affected the Trump administration’s decision not to sanction the bank for ties to North Korea in 2017.
Democrats stressed Thursday that their report was based on records from only two years of Trump’s time in the White House, and that the $7.8 million is likely an undercount of the full money Trump received from foreign governments.
“What we have is essentially the tip of the iceberg,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) told reporters. “So this $7.8 million is just a small window ― obviously a significant amount of money, but a small window ― into what is likely a fairly large sum of money and gifts.”
Why is this concerning? The New Republic (TNR) shines light on that question, under the headline "Trump's Two-Year Take From Foreign Governments While He Was President Is Staggering":
If you still had any doubts as to whether Donald Trump had self-serving motivations as the nation’s 45th president, then a new report detailing the millions of dollars he received from foreign governments should make it clear it definitely wasn’t America he was putting first.
Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from nearly two dozen foreign governments during his presidency, according to documents released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The pocket-lining funds include money Trump received from some of the “world’s most unsavory regimes,” without ever asking for congressional approval as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. (There is one violation of law; more to come on that issue.)
The report, titled “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump,” notes that it is likely an inconclusive analysis. It details just two years of Trump’s presidency and transactions between just four of his businesses, of which he owns more than 500, with 20 countries.
The biggest spenders included China, which gave Trump the largest sum out of all the nations—$5.5 million from entities including China’s Embassy in the United States, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Hainan Airlines Holding Company—as well as Saudi Arabia, which gave Trump $615,000. Other nations on the list include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, Albania, Kosovo, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, Thailand, the Self-Declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Mongolia, Lebanon, Latvia, Turkey, Hungary, and Cyprus.
“These payments were made while these governments were promoting specific foreign policy goals with the Trump Administration and even, at times, with President Trump himself, and as they were requesting specific actions from the United States to advance their own national policy objectives,” the report notes.
In other words, these countries wanted something from Trump, and they decided to pay for it -- which sounds a lot like bribery. What does U.S. law say about such activities? It clearly is illegal, and a report from NPR provides specifics:
It is illegal for presidents to accept any money from foreign governments without congressional approval per Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "no person holding any office ... shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state." (That is a second violation of law, a big one.)
Democrats say at least 20 foreign governments or state-controlled businesses paid Trump-owned businesses during his presidential term.
The Democrats' evidence consists primarily of thousands of Trump's business records obtained from his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, which were obtained after a yearslong legal battle which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.
Despite warnings from government ethics officials, Trump broke with tradition and did not divest from his businesses before taking office. Instead, he announced that he would cede responsibility for day-to-day decision making to his two eldest sons. He also pledged that there would be no new foreign deals during his time in office.
But payments from foreign governments appear to have continued.
The largest documented payment was $5.4 million in rent from China's state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank during his first two years in office.
The bank's lease payments for the space in New York's Trump Tower began in 2008, according Kimberly Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization.
At the time, Trump was a frequent political commentator who floated running for president — but the lease deal was initiated many years before his 2015 presidential campaign announcement.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, India, and Malaysia each spent more than $200,000 at Trump hotels and properties, according to the report.
At least some properties, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., said that they would not pursue or market to foreign delegations and related groups — though, as detailed in the report, did not deny foreign government bookings.
