In a new interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee — insisted that former President Donald Trump does not currently have the right for his businesses to retain $7.8 million made mostly from foreign government sources during the early parts of Trump’s presidential term.
Raskin accuses Trump of violating what’s known as the Emoluments Clause to the U.S. Constitution, which flatly prohibits office-holders from receiving a range of things of value from foreign government sources without the consent of Congress. And Trump’s businesses established and executed their methods of handling the income from foreign governments essentially on their own. Eric Trump — adult son to the former president and leading executive at the family business — cited a supposed plan under which dubiously defined “profits” from foreign government sources were given to the U.S. Treasury. Raskin said such definitely wasn’t enough.
“We’re talking about millions of dollars. So, we want it back. He’s not allowed to keep a dime of it without coming to Congress first. He never came to Congress, and they’ve been covering up for this for seven years,” Raskin said. “And when we finally got the Supreme Court to rule for us and then the District Court to do an order, we had four months of compliance before Chairman Comer shut it down — at least according to Trump’s lawyers, who said he shut it down.”
Raskin recently wrote directly to Trump on this issue, demanding specifically that he make payments to the U.S. Treasury covering that total spotlighted by Democrats on the basis of records from accounting firm Mazars as coming largely from foreign government sources. The shifting compliance that Raskin referenced is Mazars sharing documents relevant to the investigation, which the firm wound down under apparently now unclear circumstances. The Democrat, meanwhile, also noted that Eric’s assertions about a plan of sending just profits to the Treasury acknowledged the baseline that Trump businesses were raking in foreign government money.
