Thread: House Oversight Panel Has Questions About Trump Businesses And Foreign Emoluments

House Oversight Panel Has Questions About Trump Businesses And Foreign Emoluments

April 21, 20177:38 PM ET
Peter Overby

Protestors demonstrating April 15 against President Trump's purported ties to foreign governments walk by the Trump hotel during in Washington, D.C.

The Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are taking a look into the slowly brewing controversy of foreign cash flowing into President Trump's hotel in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Constitution forbids government officers to take emoluments — gifts or money — from foreign governments and officials. Trump has a plan to avoid the constitutional issue. With their letter Friday, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., raise questions about how that plan works.

Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon unveiled the plan at a Jan. 11 press conference with the then-president-elect. She said Trump had decided "that he is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury."

She said the arrangement would apply only to the profits from foreign government payments, not to the overall payments.

The Trump Organization has said the first payments will be made "after the end of the calendar year," according to USA Today.

Chaffetz and Cummings want documents showing how payments from "foreign government customers" will be identified, the profits calculated and the transfers to the Treasury tracked or disclosed.

They also want to know whether Trump, the Trump Organization or any Trump trust plans to claim the payments as tax-deductible gifts.

In a statement to NPR, Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center said the committee "has every reason to question the President's claim since he has a history of making questionable, misleading or false claims regarding charitable contributions in an effort to deflect criticism." Trump's foundation was ordered to stop soliciting contributions in New York because it was not registered to do so. He has also overstated his foundation's giving.

A group of plaintiffs led by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an emoluments lawsuit against Trump in January. Their argument rejects Dillon's analysis that emoluments are only the profit, not the gross amount, in a payment from a foreign government or official.

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/21/525124...eign-emolument

I would just refuse foreign government customers for the next 8 years and target rich businesses and wealthy travelers. Tell the diplomats to stay somewhere else. If GSA doesn't have a problem with it which they don't, our government is making a lot of money off the success of this hotel, so I don't know why Jason Chaffetz would have a problem with it.

This is all bordering on persecution of our President. He does this beautiful project, borrows tons of money to make the renovations, and does such a great job when no one else would, and then people like Jason Chaffetz and "ethics" people want to try to punish, rob and deny him the business reward he's certainly entitled to for his magnificent project because .... foreigners stay there.

Does Chaffetz know that the US government earns millions of dollars a year from this project along with the Trump Organization because it has a % of sales clause in the lease agreement?

We're $20 trillion in debt because of people like Jason Chaffetz. Trump comes along and finds a way for the government to make some easy money for US taxpayers yet our own Congress and "ethics" 501 C 3 "charity" frauds have done everything within their power to put a stain and tarnish on our own hotel enterprise in an attempt to persecute, demean and rob our President.

Disgusting.