Trump Is Perfectly Poised to Cash in on His Presidency, Constitution Be Damned
At the speed our courts operate, it’s not clear he can be stopped.
Mike Mechanic
Congress put rules in place ages ago to ensure that federal appointees and employees (including judges) don’t use their jobs to enrich themselves. The Office of Government Oversight vets those officials for conflicts of interest and can compel them and their spouses and minor children to dispense with assets deemed likely to create a conflict. For our purposes, all you need to know is that those rules don’t apply to the president, vice-president, or federal lawmakers—which is stupid, but whatever.
The Constitution, however, does place limits on elected federal officials. The president is entitled to a predetemined salary and that’s all. He is forbidden from taking anything further of value from the federal governments or any state government. Furthermore, without the consent of Congress, no federal officeholder may accept “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
This is not ambiguous. It means no foreign money, period.
Yet President Donald Trump’s affairs are awash in foreign money. (Domestic, too.) Among other problems, foreign governments have rented units at Trump Tower, booked rooms and events at his hotels and resorts, and approved his company’s overseas deals and developments—not to mention those of son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose private equity fund got a $2 billion investment from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund shortly after he left the White House, and whose new partnership with the Trump Organization opens a very problematic new can of worms.
Trump “received significant payments and benefits from foreign governments” during his first term, says Noah Bookbinder, the executive director since 2015 of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), which two years later sued Trump in an emoluments case that focused on Trump’s DC hotel, and served as outside counsel in a similar lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia. The hotel, operating out of a federal building, became a mecca for both foreign governments and American companies and CEOs who hoped to curry favor with the administration. “The research we’ve done, combined with what the House did, suggest that more than $13 million—potentially much, much more—came to his businesses from foreign governments,” Bookbinder told me.
These legal actions were upheld by federal appeals courts, but they dragged on and the Supreme Court declared them moot on January 25, 2021, as Trump was no longer in office. “As a legal matter, it is as though [our cases] never existed. And so even those favorable appeals decisions don’t have any precedential value,” Bookbinder says.
That was tough to stomach, and now Trump is back at the trough without any further guardrails—or consequences paid. He was in “clear violation of provisions intended to protect the public from corruption,” Bookbinder says, “and it’s very, very hard, it turns out, to get courts to enforce them—or get anybody to enforce them. That’s deeply frustrating, and one more example of Trump finding ways to be lawless.”
CREW is now in a triage process to determine its priorities, and which legal actions might stand a chance of success—such as the lawsuit it and other groups filed earlier this week to challenge the actions of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. In any case, Bookbinder says, the public can expect more influence-peddling during Trump’s second term, only now “there are factors that create the risk of emoluments at a much higher level.”
Prior to the election, CREW cited four primary areas of concern, not merely for conflicts of interest—that would be a very long list—but where Trump is likely in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses. And now there are five areas, because only days before he was sworn in, a Trump-controlled entity called World Liberty Financial launched a pair of “meme” cryptocurrencies: $TRUMP and $MELANIA.
Let’s consider those problem areas one at time. (Click here for my full interview with Bookbinder.)
Trump Media and Technology Group
Trump has a controlling interest in this publicly traded company—the parent of Truth Social—which didn’t exist during his first administration. It’s unprecedented for a president to hold such a position. The company is the product of a merger between Trump Media and a so-called Special Purpose Acquisition Company. According to Investopedia, SPACs, also called “blank check” companies, have “gained a reputation for being dubious operations, often likened to ‘scams,'” because their sponsors get special financial arrangements and small investors are often left holding the bag when things go south.
But the constitutional problem, Bookbinder says, is that “anyone, whether it’s a wealthy individual or a foreign country, that buys a large number of shares is likely to push the stock value up, which immediately drives up Donald Trump’s net worth—and it could go much further than renting hotel rooms or planning an event at a Trump property. There’s also the threat that those interests could quickly sell off the stock, which would drive prices down and potentially tank Trump’s net worth, which gives them further leverage. So that’s a real risk.”
Trump World Tower (New York City)
In 2019, Reuters reported that at least six foreign governments (Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, and Thailand—the EU makes seven) had been cleared by the State Department, without the congressional consent mandated by the Constitution, to rent luxury condos at Trump’s Manhattan tower—then his primary residence outside the White House. During Trump’s second term, according to CREW, public records indicate that “five foreign governments are expected to pay Trump’s business a total of nearly $2 million in monthly fees.”
LIV Golf
This, too, didn’t exist during Trump’s first term. A pro golf league backed by a Saudi investment fund, LIV Golf “has held several events at Trump’s properties and is already scheduled to hold one at one of his golf resorts in 2025,” Bookbinder notes. “That seems like another clear emoluments violation. You’d have to show that the connection to the Saudi government is direct enough, and how the money is going to his companies. But when you take a step back, it’s clear what’s happening: This is a Saudi-backed enterprise bringing business to the president.” During Trump’s first term, there were instances of the Saudis spending lavishly on Trump properties, Bookbinder points out, and “we also saw Trump making decisions that seemed surprisingly positive toward Saudi Arabia, including essentially looking the other way when Saudi Arabia killed a US-based journalist.”
Foreign Real Estate Developments
CREW writes: “Since 2021, the Trump Organization has signed three new agreements with an international developer for Trump-branded developments in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These projects may receive significant benefits from these governments during a potential second Trump presidential term.” At a hotel in Oman, a New York Times reporter witnessed “a team of sales agents…invoking Mr. Trump’s name to help sell luxury villas at prices of up to $13 million, mostly targeting superrich buyers from around the world, including from Russia, Iran, and India.”
$TRUMP Meme Coin
On Monday, my colleague Russ Choma reported that the value of the $Trump meme coin launched a few days earlier by World Liberty Financial—an entity controlled by the Trump family and in whose coins Trump and his male children reportedly hold a 20 percent stake—soared to just under $75, only to plummet to about half of that by the time Trump was sworn in.
World Liberty Financial also launched the $MELANIA coin, which peaked at $13.38 last Sunday and was trading for less than $3 late Thursday—was it the hat? In any case, the meme coin valuess are ethereal, and mercurial. “This ‘cryptocurrency’ is not really a currency. There’s not anything behind it,” Bookbinder says. “It’s just a thing people can buy because they think at some point someone else will want to buy it for that much money or more—really sort of a hollow vessel for anyone, including foreign governments, to put money into, which puts money in Trump’s pocket.”
World Liberty Financial also reportedly owns significant stakes in established cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum’s Ether coin—a potentially serious conflict given that Trump is now in a position to determine whether and how the crypto industry is regulated. “He and his administration could be making major decisions that could really affect his businesses and his income,” Bookbinder says.
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