NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Ryan Nobles recently joined MSNBC’s Chris Jansing on Thursday to talk about the new report from House Democrats detailing how former President Donald Trump profited from foreign governments while president, which they allege was unconstitutional via Mediaite.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a 155-page report on Thursday showing Trump and his businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments including China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar while he was president.
“Now, what we know is that the Constitution says a president cannot accept money payments, gifts of any kind from a foreign government or monarch without getting the express consent of Congress. Is there any record that Donald Trump, the business entities associated with his family business, went to Congress and asked for some sort of pass?” Jansing asked Nobles.
“There’s no record of that at all. And in fact, it never happened,” Nobles replied, adding:
And that’s part of the reason that House Democrats believe that this is a violation of the Emoluments Clause. And Jamie Raskin, who’s the ranking member of the Democratic Oversight Committee, specifically talked about an instance where then-President Lincoln was given a gift by a foreign government. These were tangible gifts. I believe one of them was an elephant tusk. And another thing. And instead of just keeping these gifts for himself, which he wanted to, he actually went to Congress to ask for permission if it would be okay for him to keep it. And Congress actually told him no. And the State Department actually took possession of these gifts.
So there was nothing like that as it relates to Donald Trump. Now, the argument that Republicans would make about Donald Trump in his defense is that he didn’t accept a government salary during his entire time as president, that he ended up donating that salary toward charitable causes in different aspects of the government.
According to Raskin, that’s not enough to excuse the amount of money that his companies were taking from these foreign business entities. The other argument that Republicans have made is that the Trump businesses were actually providing tangible benefit to some of these business, these different foreign governments and their and their associates. For instance, they would buy a hotel room at the going rate. They would get a hotel room for that. It’s not as if they were just passing money off with no exchange of goods and services. But the Emoluments Clause doesn’t necessarily allow for an exemption in that regard. If it’s something that you’re benefiting from financially, that’s something that you have to report to Congress and ask for permission to do so. So this is something that, you know, was the investigation started while Trump was in office.
It’s now come to this point where this report has been released. But again, Democrats are in the minority here, Chris, so there isn’t much more they can do than get this out into the public sphere unless Republicans join in and, you know, either refer this to the Department of Justice or something along those lines. This is likely the most that they can do is get this out to the public square for Americans to digest it. Of course, it comes right as the 2024 election is starting to heat up.
