Plan to host G-7 revives emoluments issue

[struggle4progress]

By Jeffrey Toobin
September 5, 2019

... Trump brought the emoluments clause to life. After he refused to divest his real-estate holdings upon becoming President, his hotels became a magnet for foreign visitors seeking to curry favor with his Administration. A former Trump Organization official recently estimated that foreign governments spent more than a million dollars at Trump’s businesses in 2018, mostly at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Since Trump was inaugurated, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been good customers there.) But the money flowing from foreign governments to the President’s businesses could soar if he makes good on his apparent plan, which he announced last month, to host next year’s G-7 meeting at his Doral golf resort, in Florida. If the deal comes to fruition, the conference would mark a new level of grifting by the President, and it appears consistent with a new brazenness in his efforts to profit from his office ...

Some of Trump’s efforts may have run afoul of an even more obscure provision of the Constitution: the so-called domestic emoluments clause. This section of Article II states that the President “shall not receive” any emolument, other than his fixed salary, from “the United States, or any of them.” Again, the idea behind this provision is similar to the one underlying the foreign clause: the Framers didn’t want any part of the government, or any state, trying to influence the President by funnelling money to him. This is precisely the problem with Vice-President Mike Pence’s recent trip to Ireland, where he wasted many hours and untold thousands of dollars of government money, to stay at a Trump golf resort that was nearly two hundred miles away from his meetings with Irish leaders, including the Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, in Dublin. (The Administration’s explanations for how Pence came to stay at the hotel have been unconvincing, to say the least.) Can anyone seriously doubt that the reason Pence stayed at Trump’s hotel was to please the boss, at the taxpayers’ expense? ...

... . What society chooses not to punish tells you the most about the prevailing moral standards of any age. According to an estimate by the Center for Responsive Politics, various domestic political groups and committees have spent nearly twenty million dollars on events at Trump’s properties.

Unlike government expenditures, there’s no question that these payments are legal. But in a country that purports to demand that its politicians work for the public interest, not for their private gain, Trump’s behavior is an outrage ...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-plan-to-host-the-g-7-revives-the-issue-of-emoluments

[FakeNoose]

1. It's called tribute, but we know what it really is

[Firestorm49]

2. Revives it? What's the point of the clause if it's not enforced, or at the very least, acted upon?

So much of what this corrupt administration undertakes seems to blow away in the wind. If you have laws passed for a specific purpose, and subsequent violations of that law are broken, and no action is taken as a result, then eliminate the law, because the effort has been nothing more than a waste of the public’s hard earned money.

This crap has been going on for over two years. The public has seen the evidence. We are mad as hell. All of this lunacy gives high blood pressure added nuance.

Oh boy, I can hardly wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait to see what’s going to come of the emoluments clause fiasco - maybe from my grave.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

3. here's a 5th recommendation

[NewJeffCT]

4. it has not revived the Emoluments issue

it's put a spotlight back onto it, but the Senate/House lawsuit is still moving through the court system

[Hekate]

5. KnR