The intensifying threat of Donald Trump’s emoluments

Source: CREW
Type: news-reporting

Source Text

Donald Trump will once again violate the Constitution’s Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses if he serves a second term as president of the United States and fails to divest from his businesses.

The Constitution requires that, before taking office, Trump fully divest himself from any businesses receiving profits, gains or advantages, beyond his official compensation, from the federal government or the individual states. Without consent from Congress, the Constitution further requires Trump fully divest himself from any businesses receiving profits, gains or advantages from foreign governments as well. To date, Trump has given no indication that he would divest from his businesses during a potential second term, nor seek congressional consent to retain any of the millions of dollars in payments and other benefits he is expected to receive from foreign governments.

The Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses are designed to prohibit financial conflicts of interest by sitting presidents and other government officials. The Foreign Emoluments Clause prevents the president from receiving, among other things, profits, gains or advantages from foreign governments, without the consent of Congress. The Domestic Emoluments Clause prevents the president from receiving under any circumstances profits, gains or advantages from the federal government itself, outside of his or her government salary and benefits, or from the individual states. The framers of our Constitution drafted both Emoluments Clauses broadly, because they were concerned about the many ways a president’s loyalty could be compromised by his or her personal financial interest.

While serving as president, Donald Trump violated the law by failing to divest. Trump never received Congress’s consent to accept the millions of dollars of foreign emoluments he received through payments to his businesses, and did not divest from his business to prevent his receipt of domestic emoluments. Instead, Trump received millions from foreign governments, including a minimum of $5.5 million from the Chinese government alone. 

After his election, Trump acknowledged that his foreign business interests presented “a little conflict of interest”—a remarkable understatement—but took no meaningful steps to address them. Never in our history had a president come to office presenting the same threat of harming America’s national interest in favor of their personal financial interests. And in spite of Trump’s efforts to avoid transparency, publicly available records reveal a mountain of violations of the Emoluments Clauses during his administration, resulting in a level of corruption that has no analogue in American history.

And yet, the scale of Trump’s violations of these anti-corruption laws would likely increase significantly in a second term. Earlier this year, Trump deflected when asked whether he would divest from his businesses during a second term. Instead, he responded that $8 million is “a small amount of money” and that he has earned some of his outside income by “doing services” through his hotels and clubs. Trump did not divest, and Congress did not consent to his acceptance of foreign emoluments during his term in office. Trump has given no indication that he will divest from his business if he secures the presidency again or that he will request permission from Congress to accept foreign emoluments.

Despite his sale of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which served as a free-for-all opportunity for foreign and state governments to funnel money to him, Trump’s businesses are expected to receive millions of dollars in constitutionally prohibited payments during a potential second term. His business empire still presents many of the same opportunities for foreign governments to funnel money to Trump through hotel stays and lavish celebrations at Trump properties. And now Trump’s majority ownership of a publicly traded social media company only intensifies the threat.

Potential sources of Trump’s emoluments in a second term include, but are not limited to: 

• Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump is the majority stakeholder of the publicly traded Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns the social media platform Truth Social. Trump becomes eligible to sell his holdings of TMTG stock (Nasdaq ticker symbol DJT) as soon as September 20. Any substantial purchase of DJT stock by foreign or domestic governments while Trump holds a significant number of shares would raise emoluments concerns. Various other transactions, including those artificially inflating the market value of DJT stock, could also violate the Emoluments Clauses. The use of personal data, sales of advertising and official government uses of the platform would also pose discrete emoluments concerns.
• Trump World Tower. CREW’s research of the public record indicates that five foreign governments are expected to pay Trump’s business a total of nearly $2 million in monthly fees for units in New York’s Trump World Tower during a potential second term.
• LIV Golf league. Since it was founded in 2021, the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league has hosted six events at Trump clubs. LIV Golf may continue to pay Trump businesses to host golf tournaments during a potential second term.
• New real estate developments in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Since 2021, the Trump Organization has signed three new agreements with an international developer for Trump-branded developments in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These projects may receive significant benefits from these governments during a potential second Trump presidential term.

Upon winning election in 2016, Trump refused to follow the advice of the Director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), as well as non-partisan watchdogs like CREW, to divest from his business holdings while serving as president. Instead, Trump maintained his constitutionally prohibited business dealings and took steps to keep his financial interests secret, including by refusing to release his tax returns.

During his presidency, foreign governments paid Trump millions of dollars through his businesses. Although the exact number is not publicly known, these foreign emoluments included:

• More than 150 foreign government officials from 77 foreign governments who patronized Trump properties, believing it was “a statement” and showed “a close bond with the United States.” A visit to New York City by the Saudi Crown Prince was the reason the Trump International Hotel there made a profit during one quarter in 2018. 
• Foreign governments hosted or sponsored 13 events at Trump properties, each likely making five and six figure payments, including national day celebrations held by Romania, the Philippines, Bahrain and Kuwait. 
• Before its investigation was prematurely concluded by Chairman James Comer, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability uncovered that, during just two years in the White House, Trump received at least $7.8 million from at least 20 foreign governments through his businesses. 
• In addition to monetary payments, foreign governments gave Trump other things of value while he held office: 11 foreign governments granted his businesses nearly 70 trademarks; Indonesia gave a Trump real estate project a beneficial special economic status; Dubai developers hired a Chinese company to build a Trump-branded golf club; and local officials in Ireland granted Trump’s golf resort there permission to expand, even as seawater threatens to wash parts of it away. 

Foreign governments made paying Trump’s businesses part of their lobbying strategies. As one diplomat put it in the weeks before Trump took office, “Why wouldn’t I stay at [Trump’s] hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”

Trump reinforced the idea that his businesses were an extension of him and his administration. Trump provided paying members of his private Mar-a-Lago club access to and photo ops with government officials, even as world events were unfolding. When meeting with foreign leaders, he would discuss properties he owned in their countries. During a campaign event in 2015, Trump said, “Saudi Arabia … [t]hey buy apartments from me. They spend 40 million, 50 million… Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” 

These financial conflicts posed serious threats to America’s national security and foreign policy. The Trump administration acted favorably towards countries that subsidized Trump’s businesses, even to the extent that the administration appears to have undermined its own sanctions regimes in relation to specific Chinese and Turkish companies, despite warnings from U.S. intelligence officials that such decisions would harm America’s national security. 

Trump’s financial conflicts also appear to have influenced his administration’s military decisions. For example, Trump supported the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, despite that country housing a U.S. military base. He also made a sudden decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria after a phone call with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkiye, resulting in the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians and American military allies. 

In response to these threats, CREW and our partners, including the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, filed two lawsuits seeking to stop Trump’s improper acceptance of emoluments while in office. Two federal appeals courts issued decisions in CREW’s favor, but, after Trump was defeated and begrudgingly left office, the Supreme Court dismissed the cases without resolving the underlying legal issues. Those cases featured the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which the Trump administration allowed to operate out of a federal building, despite clear language in the lease contract prohibiting it. An Inspector General report found that the Trump administration’s General Services Administration “ignored the Constitution” to maintain this free-for-all opportunity to funnel money to the then-president.

Though Trump has sold his D.C. hotel, he is now positioned to increase the scale of emoluments he could receive as president, including through his majority stake in TMTG. Trump’s DJT stock holdings now reportedly make up the majority of his net worth. Despite difficulties generating revenue, having no clear path to profitability and requiring subsidy from Trump’s political allies and business relationships to stay afloat, the company’s inflated stock price appears to rise and fall with Trump’s own political fortunes, rather than customary business indicators.

Importantly, Trump’s known conflicts of interest are likely to only be the tip of the iceberg. The majority of emoluments that Trump received during his term in office were not planned before the 2016 election. If Trump becomes president again, foreign governments will likely find ways to do business with him that cannot be predicted.

Given the past challenges enforcing the Emoluments Clauses, and the intensifying national security threats posed by Trump’s new financial conflicts, Congress should pass legislation to make it simpler to enforce these clauses, specifically by:

• Requiring presidential and vice presidential candidates to disclose a detailed plan to address actual and potential financial conflicts of interest that would violate the Emoluments Clauses if elected;
• Absent congressional consent for particular foreign emoluments, requiring presidents and vice presidents to divest all assets that would violate the Emoluments Clauses within 30 days of taking the oath of office;
• Creating a transparent procedure for presidents and other officials to seek Congress’s permission when they receive and seek to retain foreign emoluments;
• Empowering the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to verify the president and vice president’s compliance with divestiture and requiring OGE to make publicly available compliance reports to Congress;
• Requiring the president and vice president to make publicly available certifications, subject to violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 for knowing or willful false statements, about their compliance to OGE;
• Amending 5 U.S.C. § 1216 to clarify that the Office of Special Counsel has jurisdiction to investigate issues concerning violations of the Emoluments Clauses and related disclosure and reporting obligations;
• Creating further legal safeguards to protect the independence and efficacy of OGE, including requiring that a president have a legally permissible cause to remove an OGE Director;
• Requiring presidential and vice presidential candidates to publicly release more comprehensive financial disclosures, including greater specificity in amounts for information currently disclosed, beneficial ownership information and copies of their federal tax returns, subject to necessary redactions;
• Extending the conflict of interest statute, 18 U.S.C. § 208, to the president and vice president;
• Amending 18 U.S.C. § 431 to void contracts between federal agencies and the president, the vice president, their immediate family members (including adult children) and businesses any of these covered individuals control; and
• Creating a clear legal mechanism, allowing for declaratory and injunctive relief, to enforce the Emoluments Clauses and divestiture requirements in state and federal court, including against a sitting president in their personal capacity.

Further, even without such legislative action, executive branch employees must abide by their oaths to the Constitution and ethical obligations to refuse to use their authority to enable prohibited emoluments to flow to a sitting president. Executive branch employees should immediately report such incidents to their agency’s Office of Inspector General or the federal Office of the Special Counsel. 

Even absent such reports from agency employees, agency Inspectors General must, consistent with their independent legal obligations, affirmatively build and implement compliance programs to ensure employees do not contribute to illegal activity by enabling prohibited foreign or domestic emoluments. 

Finally, where permitted by law, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) should investigate Trump’s foreign emoluments as they occur and recommend divestment where appropriate—to include investigating whether the Saudi investment in LIV Golf will grant the government of Saudi Arabia and its royal family access to sensitive information concerning government officials and leaders of critical industries who attend LIV golf events at Trump golf properties. 

The framers of our Constitution wrote the Emoluments Clauses for a reason—to protect America’s national interests from public corruption and undue financial influence by foreign governments. Our leaders must act now to enforce our Constitution and protect our democracy from these intensifying emoluments threats.

Events Citing This Source

Event	Date	Category
Emoluments Clause Violations	2017 ongoing	Abuse of Power

People Mentioned

Person	Role

Institutions Mentioned

Institution	Description

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