Here is a direct challenge to the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Trump says his Miami resort would be ‘great location’ for next year’s G-7:
President Donald Trump on Monday floated the possibility of holding next year’s G-7 summit at his golf resort in Miami.
Miami is a “great location” for next year’s summit, he said at a bilateral meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, adding that it would be held next to the city’s international airport.
“It’s one of the biggest airports, takes planes from everywhere. Sometimes you have hours and hours of driving to get to certain locations,” he said.
“You’ll only have a five-minute drive, which is good,” he added while turning to Merkel.
When asked if it would be held at the Trump National Doral Miami, an 800-acre golf resort located less than five miles from the airport, the president said it was a strong contender.
“They love the location of the hotel,” he said. “We haven’t found anything that’s even close to competing with it.”
Personally profiting from scheduling government business at one of your properties would appear to be a no-brainer violation of the Emoluments Clause. Salon reports, Donald Trump wants to hold next G-7 summit at his Florida golf resort:
Trump likes to visit his own properties so much that he suggested holding next year’s G-7 summit, a gathering of leaders from the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, at the Doral resort or one of his other luxury properties, former and current White House officials told the Post.
Aides said that White House staffers and even the White House counsel’s office have pushed back on Trump’s official visits to his properties and voiced concerns about the appearance of him using the power of the presidency to direct taxpayer money into his own companies.
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[Trump’s visits to his golf properties] have been a boon for the resorts. His companies have earned at least $1.6 million in revenue from federal officials and Republican campaigns who had to travel with Trump, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, which reported that the real number is likely much higher because the data used only covered spending through the first half of 2017.
Republicans have even “reshaped” their fundraising schedule, with one-third of fundraisers and donor events attended by Trump being held at his own properties, according to the report. Republican fundraisers told the Post that several groups have held events at Trump’s properties in order to increase the chance that the president will attend.
“The president knows that by visiting his properties, taxpayer dollars will flow directly into his own pockets. Then, unsurprisingly, the president visits his properties all the time,” Ryan Shapiro of the watchdog group Property for the People told the Post.
An earlier analysis found that the Trump campaign and more than three dozen members of Congress had spent upwards of $4 million at Trump’s properties.
The increased political spending at Trump’s properties is at the center of a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, who allege that Trump’s profits violate laws barring the president from receiving gifts or additional payments from the federal government. Both attorneys general are also alleging that Trump violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution because his Washington hotel accepts payments from foreign governments.
House Democrats passed an amendment in response to Trump’s frequent trips to his properties, seeking to bar the State Department from spending any money at his businesses.
“It’s against the emoluments clause of the Constitution to be making money out of the job,” said Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a Democrat who sponsored the amendment. “And he does it every chance he can.”
Last year, taxpayers paid at least $30,000 for meeting rooms and hotel stays for then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other officials in luxury suites when Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
According to State Department emails obtained by Property of the People, the rooms cost 300 percent more than the maximum amount allowed by government policies. Taxpayers were also hit with a $1,000 bar tab that Trump aides ran up at the club, ProPublica reported.
Trump’s repeated trips to his resorts came as both his Doral and Mar-a-Lago properties have struggled to draw non-government business.
Mar-a-Lago’s revenue fell by nearly 10 percent from 2017 to last year, according to Trump’s financial disclosure. Doral’s net operating income has plummeted by69 percent since Trump took office.
“They are severely underperforming,” a Trump tax consultant told officials earlier this year while seeking tax relief for the properties. “There is some negative connotation that is associated with the brand.”
But wait! There’s more. Trump last week called for Russia to be reinstated to the G-7 before he left Washington for the summit. The NY Post reports, Trump says it’s ‘possible’ he’ll invite Russia to the G-7 next year:
President Trump on Sunday said “it’s possible” that he’ll invite Russia to attend the G-7 summit the US is hosting next year, even though European countries oppose allowing Russian leader Vladimir Putin to be readmitted.
”We did discuss it. We had a very good discussion on Russia and President Putin, and a lively discussion, but, really, a good one,” Trump told reporters after meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Biarritz, France, where the gathering of world leaders is taking place. ”It’s certainly possible. We’ll see.”
The president went on to say “a number of people” [i.e., Putin] would like to see Russia return to the group, saying it would be a “positive.”
”I don’t know that we’ll make a decision one way or the other, but we did have a discussion about Russia last night, as to whether or not we want to invite them back,” Trump said. “Maybe we’ll just leave it the way it is.”
The head of the European Council, which represents the European Union’s member states, said Russia cannot be allowed back into the group.
“One year ago, in Canada, President Trump suggested reinviting Russia to G-7, stating openly that Crimea’s annexation by Russia was partially justified. And that we should accept this fact,” Donald Tusk said on Saturday. “Under no condition can we agree with this logic.”
Trump wanted a state visit from his boss Vladimir Putin to the White House last year, but it never came together. Trump floated a Putin visit to the White House in a March 20 phone call. A Kremlin aide, Yury Ushakov, disclosed the White House invitation in comments to Russian journalists. According to the state news agency RIA Novosti, “When our presidents spoke on the phone, it was Trump who proposed holding the first meeting in Washington, in the White House.”
Trump is desperate to show off the spoils of Putin’s victory over American democracy to his boss. He probably thinks he can sign over the deed to the United States, but he does not own it. He can sign a surrender in a White House ceremony — not that it would have any legal force of effect. It would just confirm what we already know about him.
UPDATE: Last week District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan allowed President Trump to appeal rulings in a lawsuit that accuses him of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by doing business with foreign governments, putting the case on hold in the meantime. Federal judge allows Trump to appeal lawsuit over foreign payments accepted by his hotels:
The ruling effectively pauses a lawsuit brought by more than 200 congressional Democrats, who say Trump’s companies, which include hotels, should be prohibited from taking payments from foreign states. Trump has argued that the Democrats do not have legal standing to sue him in the first place.
Sullivan’s ruling was not a surprise. In July, an appeals court in Washington had strongly signaled to Sullivan that he should allow this unusual appeal — ruling that Sullivan had probably “abused his discretion” when he denied an earlier attempt.
In his ruling, Sullivan noted that this sort of appeal — done in the middle of a district court case instead of at its end — is warranted when there is “substantial ground for difference of opinion” on a key matter of law. The appeals court had indicated that this was such a case, so he agreed to let the appeal go forward.
One effect of Sullivan’s ruling will be to keep on hold the “discovery” process, a pretrial fact-finding period in which the Democrats wanted to serve 37 subpoenas on Trump businesses, asking about their foreign customers.
Sullivan had paused that process in July after the appeals court’s ruling.
The decision is another setback for those who hoped to use the courts — and the Constitution’s emoluments clauses — to stop Trump’s private business from taking money from foreign governments. Attorneys working with the Democrats said that subpoenas delayed would, in effect, be subpoenas denied — that Trump’s first term might run out before the plaintiffs could get any answers.
Two other cases have been dismissed, as courts ruled that those plaintiffs — a nonprofit watchdog group in one case, and the attorneys general of the District and Maryland in the other — did not have the legal right to sue Trump.
The attorneys general have said that they are considering asking for a rehearing of the case and that they expect the issue eventually to reach the Supreme Court.
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