Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released a report showing that during Donald Trump’s four years as president, his businesses received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments and officials from 20 different countries — among them, China, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Democrats, in the report, argue that the payments were a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which forbids federal government officials from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments without Congress’ permission.
On X, formerly Twitter, the former president’s son Eric Trump said of the report, “What a joke! All foreign government profits, for stays at our hotels and other properties while my father was in office, were voluntaraly[sic] donated to the United States Treasury.”
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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) was vehemently critical of Eric Trump’s response to the House Oversight report during a Friday morning, January 5 appearance on CNN.
Raskin told CNN’s John Berman, “I love that excuse because what he’s saying is: Trust us, we’ll go through all the numbers. And they put in, I think, a half a million dollars — which kind of gives the game away. They know they’re taking millions of dollars in unlawful, unconstitutional foreign government payments. But he says: Trust us, we’ll do our own accounting. We’re not going to show it to you, but we’ll give some money back.”
The Maryland Democrat continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say that you can’t keep profits from foreign governments; the Constitution says you can’t keep any payments at all without going to Congress to have it accepted. We’re talking about an unbroken line of presidents accepting that and always coming to Congress to say: We received some trinkets, we received a statue, we received a painting — whatever it is. And then, it’s up to Congress to decide what to do with it.”
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