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D.C., Maryland to sue Trump over alleged Constitutional violations

By LOUIS NELSON and JOSH GERSTEIN

The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia intend to file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of violating portions of the Constitution intended to protect against corruption and seeking to uncover the tax returns that the president has thus far been unwilling to release.

A source familiar plans for the suit said its focus will be on the president’s continued ownership of his family’s business empire, control of which Trump said has been handed over to his two adult sons. But far from the blind trust standard adopted by past presidents, Trump continues to receive some information about the Trump organization, including profit reports, from his sons.

Details of the lawsuit brought by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, both Democrats, were first reported by The Washington Post.

The president’s tax returns, which Trump has refused to release despite a decades-long tradition of presidential candidates releasing them, would be sought through the discovery process if the case is allowed to proceed, according to the source. The lawsuit accuses Trump, via his businesses, of being “deeply enmeshed with a legion of foreign and domestic government actors.” His continued ownership of the Trump organizations constitutes “unprecedented constitutional violations,” it says.

Partially at issue in the case is the Constitution’s so-called “emoluments clause,” a portion of the document that prohibits those holding “any office of profit or trust” from accepting a gift, payment or title from a foreign nation. Another portion of the Constitution cited in the case prohibits the president from accepting payments from a particular state, intended to guard against preferential treatment for one state over another.

At a press conference in January before his inauguration, the president and his legal team announced that the Trump Organization would donate money earned at its hotels from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury. But last March, the Trump Organization announced that it would not begin making those donations until 2018, an announcement that was followed in May by another one in which the organization declared that it will be “impractical” to single out foreign guests so as to siphon their payments to the Treasury.

Lawyers from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit watchdog group that goes by the acronym CREW, will act as outside counsel to the two attorneys general in their lawsuit against the president. In addition to its work with Racine and Frosh, CREW has brought its own lawsuit to bear against Trump over alleged Constitutional conflicts, a case that the Justice Department moved late last week to throw out.