WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s companies obtained almost $8 million in funds from overseas governments whereas Trump was president, in keeping with new analysis by Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Unlike Republicans of their effort to pin corruption on President Joe Biden, Democrats on the House oversight committee have receipts — greater than 400 pages of them — displaying funds to Trump’s companies from overseas officers seemingly looking for to affect the U.S. authorities.
Trump refused to divest from his enterprise empire when he turned president, creating a possibility for anybody hoping to win his favor to place cash straight into his pocket by staying at his inns.
“When he arrived in the White House, Trump was determined not only to keep this well-branded global corporate empire going but to seize a new and unprecedented opportunity to make it ever more lucrative for himself and his family,” the House oversight committee’s Democratic workers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), mentioned of their report.
“It would soon become clear that he viewed the presidency as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for self-enrichment and profit maximization, courtesy of some of the most corrupt governments in the world,” the report mentioned.
Democrats and nonpartisan ethics consultants have lengthy argued that Trump’s refusal to divest violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on presidents accepting items or “emoluments” from kings, princes or overseas states. Trump confronted emoluments lawsuits however the Supreme Court declared the circumstances moot after he left the White House in January 2021.
Meanwhile, since 2019, Democrats on the House oversight committee have sought data from Trump’s accounting agency reflecting his overseas earnings. After a federal court docket awarded entry in 2022, Democrats mentioned they’d discovered data reflecting greater than $750,000 in funds from overseas officers at Trump’s lodge in Washington, D.C. Despite a court docket order requiring extra materials be turned over, Republicans quietly shut down doc manufacturing final 12 months as they launched their quest for filth on Biden.
Thursday’s report represents the completion of the Democrats’ emoluments analysis. Using paperwork obtained by the court docket order plus already-public data, Democrats tallied $7.8 million in overseas funds from 20 international locations throughout Trump’s presidency. Most of the sum got here from Chinese sources, together with China’s embassy within the U.S. and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a state-owned enterprise that leased property at Trump Tower in New York. Democrats counsel of their report that the funds from ICBC might have affected the Trump administration’s choice to not sanction the financial institution for ties to North Korea in 2017.
Though Democrats offered their report as a continuation of their investigation into Trump’s violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, it’s clearly meant as a rebuke of the impeachment inquiry in opposition to Biden. The House of Representatives might maintain an impeachment vote someday within the coming months.
Republicans have accused Biden of improperly benefiting from his son Hunter Biden’s enterprise offers, by way of which the youthful Biden obtained tens of millions from overseas nationals in China and Ukraine throughout and after Joe Biden’s time as vice chairman. Republicans have mentioned Joe Biden might have accepted overseas bribes by way of his son’s work.
The solely drawback with the allegations is that there’s not a lot proof. Republicans have sifted by way of years of Hunter Biden’s financial institution data with out discovering any important money flows to the president – apart from 4 $1,380 transfers that had been apparently reimbursements for truck funds the president made on his son’s behalf in 2018. House oversight committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has mentioned that as a result of Hunter Biden’s cash got here from overseas sources, the funds to his father had been tainted, even when they had been mortgage reimbursements.
As HuffPost has beforehand reported, the overseas funds that went on to companies managed by Trump himself is likely to be higher examples of the type of corruption Republicans are speaking about.
