The top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have issued a scathing letter announcing they are launching an investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to obtain $230 million in compensation for investigations conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In that letter, addressed to President Donald Trump at “The White House (whatever’s left of it),” they describe his  efforts as “blatantly illegal and unconstitutional,” “comically unconstitutional,” a “shake down,” “theft,” and an “outrageous conspiracy.” CBS News Justice Correspondent Scott MacFarlane posted the three-page document to social media.

“Your plan to have your obedient underlings at the Department of Justice (DOJ) instruct the U.S. Treasury to pay you, personally, hundreds of millions of dollars especially at a time when most Americans are struggling to pay rent, put food on the table, and afford health care—is an outrageous and shocking attempt to shake down the American people,” wrote Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia.

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“The Founders feared presidents like you might one day be tempted to use their powers to steal U.S. taxpayer funds,” the two Democrats continued.

They described the U.S. Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause, which they said prohibits any payment from the federal government or from the states, except for the president’s salary.

“Your plan to have your former criminal defense attorneys, including the Deputy Attorney General and the Associate Attorney General, sign off on your demand for an astronomical $230 million payout from the U.S. Treasury clearly violates this ban on additional payments,” they said, calling his demands “bogus.”

They allege that Trump waited until he “became President and installed your handpicked loyalists at DOJ, knowing that you could instruct them to co-sign your demand notes in secret behind closed doors, and then you could present the notes to the U.S. Treasury for cold hard cash courtesy of the American taxpayer. That isn’t justice, it is theft.”

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They add that they “urge you to renounce your plan publicly and assure the American people that their President is not pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars at their expense.”

The Democrats are asking the President to produce related documents and information by October 30.

NEW: Ranking Members of House Judiciary & Oversight committees launch probe into reported Trump pursuit of $230 million in claims from taxpayers

Inquiry to Admin: “The Founders feared presidents like you might one day be tempted to use their powers to steal US taxpayer funds” pic.twitter.com/60ODPllkic

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) October 23, 2025

READ MORE: ‘Amateur Historian’ Mike Johnson Hails Trump’s Ballroom as ‘Greatest’ White House Upgrade

President Donald Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing and his plan to construct a 650-person ballroom in its place have attracted deep-pocketed donors, some of whom are now facing ethical concerns, or condemnation for supporting what many view as the needless erasure of American history and heritage.

“Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Google, Coinbase, Comcast and Meta are just some of the major companies who have made donations to build President Donald Trump’s proposed 90,000-square-foot ballroom, according to the White House,” CNN reported on Thursday.

The list of 37 names of corporations and individuals also includes HP, T-Mobile, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and family, and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and her spouse, Jeff Sprecher.

READ MORE: ‘Racist on Its Face’: Top Democrat Blasts Trump’s ‘Truly Vile’ New Policy

One name missing from the White House’s list: President Donald Trump, who initially had said he would pay for the ballroom himself. TIME magazine reported that “Trump confirmed on Monday that some of the money for the ballroom would come from his personal funds.”

On Wednesday afternoon, as ABC News reported, Trump said the ballroom would be “paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine.”

CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote: “Lots of companies with contracts and other business before the government on the list of donors to fund the president’s gold-colored ballroom.”

Critics are now blasting not only the President for demolishing the East Wing — which he had originally said would remain untouched — but also for raising pay-to-play ethics concerns, while turning their ire on the donors themselves.

Pointing to video of the demolition, veteran journalist Barbara Starr asked, “Curious….do donors to this ballroom want to be known for contributing to tearing down this piece of history? Is it good corporate PR?”

READ MORE: ‘Amateur Historian’ Mike Johnson Hails Trump’s Ballroom as ‘Greatest’ White House Upgrade

Last week, CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote: “Any gifts to fund the White House ballroom need to be completely transparent so that the American people can judge for themselves what the funders are getting in return for their millions.”

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on Tuesday also focused on ethical concerns.

“Trump’s ballroom donors include:

-Google, whose CEO thanked Trump for ‘resolution’ of an antitrust case
-Palantir, which has lucrative contracts with ICE
-Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, who would profit from Trump’s regulatory rollbacks for private equity”

“Pay-to-play,” he concluded.

On Thursday he added, “The biggest corporate donors to Trump’s ballroom either have big federal contracts, are currently doing business with the Trump family, or have active antirust cases before the courts. Everything is for sale.”

Professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter also called it “Pay to play.”

Last week, Painter told The New York Times, “This is payment for access, not just to the grounds of the White House but access to the president of the United States.”

READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Jeffries Torches Trump’s ‘Out of Control’ Press Secretary

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A prominent Senate Democrat is blasting President Donald Trump’s new refugee policy, calling it “racist” and “truly vile.”

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed to a New York Times article that reported the president’s “proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.”

“We began formally accepting refugees in the aftermath of WWII,” wrote Senator Murphy, who serves on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Since then, we’ve provided lifesaving shelter for millions displaced by persecution and war, many targeted for their faith. In modern times, President Reagan saved the most refugees, admitting around 210,000.”

He explained that this new proposal would “drastically slash the numbers of refugees admitted.”

READ MORE: ‘Amateur Historian’ Mike Johnson Hails Trump’s Ballroom as ‘Greatest’ White House Upgrade

“But it gets worse,” he said. “The new policy reportedly will effectively allow only white foreigners to qualify. If you’re not white, you get turned away. It’s unreal – like we’re back in Jim Crow days.”

“How is he going to do this?” Murphy asked. “Reporting suggests Trump will give almost all of the refugee slots to white South African Afrikaners who he says are facing a genocide. But that’s made up – there’s zero reason to give preference to Afrikaners.”

According to The Washington Post, Trump’s “plan to overhaul the U.S. refugee resettlement process, including a drastic reduction in overall annual admissions, coincides with a concerted effort to prepare thousands of White South Africans to relocate to the United States through the system.”

“If the administration succeeds,” the Post reported, “almost all people admitted to the U.S. as refugees — as many as 7,000 from a maximum potential pool of 7,500 — could be Afrikaners, a group not traditionally eligible for the program but one that President Donald Trump says has been tyrannized by South Africa’s Black majority.”

Strikingly, Murphy adds, the “other group Trump is prioritizing? Members of the German political party AfD, who the White House says are being ‘targeted’ for their views. This is a neo-Nazi party that defended the SS. You think I’m making this up? I’m not.”

READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Jeffries Torches Trump’s ‘Out of Control’ Press Secretary

AfD, or Alternative for Germany, is a growing far-right nationalist political party.

Germany’s “main intelligence service has labelled some branches of the AfD as extremist groups and placed several of its leaders under surveillance,” TIME magazine reported earlier this year. “In the European Parliament, an alliance of right-wing groups expelled the party last spring for being too radical. One AfD official had suggested the Nazi SS were ‘not all criminals.’ Another has called the Holocaust a mere speck of ‘bird s–‘ on the glorious sweep of German history.”

Murphy, continuing with his warning, wrote, “Trump and the white nationalists that surround him aren’t even hiding their racist aims any longer. This proposal is a gross betrayal of the refugee program’s intent and will be an indelible stain on America’s reputation. We won’t easily recover from this.”

Promoting Senator Murphy’s remarks, Dr. Craig Spencer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, warned: “This isn’t *just* racism.”

“It’s eugenics,” he charged. “Look further back, before WWII, to the 1924 Johnson Reed Act that slashed immigration into the U.S. Pushed by eugenicists, it prioritized resettling white immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.”

“Eugenics,” Spencer added, “also explains why members of the AfD—an extremist party whose leaders frequently use Nazi slogans—are reportedly prioritized for refugee slots in this administration’s plans.”

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