Raskin vows report into the money Donald Trump received while president: In a TV interview, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee vowed a report into the money received by Donald Trump when he was president.
Donald Trump Has a New Problem to Deal With
The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee, throughout the year, has been investigating foreign business deals by Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and other Biden relatives, and attempted to draw inferences about corruption and wrongdoing by President Biden himself.
They have not, up until now, found any evidence that the president received any money from any of the deals, nor have they shown that he took any action as vice president or president connected to any of those deals.
Throughout, many Democrats have had a retort to this: Didn’t Donald Trump, while he was president, make a great deal of money from different business deals, connected to his hotels and golf courses?
And didn’t his children and son-in-law make a great deal of money too, even as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner had official roles in government, something Hunter Biden did not?
Now, the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is vowing action on that front.
Appearing this week on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, talked about the money Trump made while in office.
“During the Trump administration, we saw the development of a completely new public philosophy, which is that government is not an instrument of the common,” Raskin said on “This Week,” as reported by The Hill. “Government is an instrument for private self-enrichment for the guy who gets in, his family, for his private businesses.” He went on to compare that to how Vladimir Putin does things in Russia.
“I’m concerned, not just about public officials like Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, but even family members who go along for the ride, and I’ve been begging my colleague, Chairman Comer, for us to do a serious analysis of what the laws should be about moneymaking,” Raskin added. Then he said the Democrats on the committee are planning a report about the buckraking of the Trump Administration.
“We’re gonna release a report about all of the foreign government emoluments — millions of dollars — we can document that Donald Trump pocketed at the hotels at the golf courses to business deals when he was president and that his family got,” Raskin said on the show. “But they’ve not laid a glove on Joe Biden. As president, they haven’t been able to show any criminal corruption on his part — what they’ve got is Hunter Biden.”
As the minority on the committee, the Raskin-led Democrats lack subpoena power. But they can put out any report they want and will have a chance to point out the hypocrisy of those who push the “Biden Crime Family” line.
Whether Trump or those around him had violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause was an occasional talking point during his presidency, leading to some lawsuits. However, nothing involving the Emoluments Clause ever led to any serious criminal investigation, and the Supreme Court dismissed a pair of lawsuits in early 2021, seemingly putting an end to the matter.
“One emoluments case was originally brought by lawyers for Washington, DC, and Maryland, who argued Trump violated the Constitution by accepting payments from foreign and domestic governments through the Trump International Hotel,” CNN reported in January of 2021, days after Trump left office. “Another was brought by various members of the hospitality industry who own or work in hotels and restaurants who argued they were also at a competitive disadvantage because Trump had not used a blind trust when he assumed the presidency but instead continued to retain an interest in his businesses.”
No justice dissented when the Supreme Court rejected the lawsuits.
Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida.
“Our lawsuit demonstrated for the first time that the Emoluments Clauses, centuries-old anti-corruption protections embedded in the Constitution, can be enforced and that those clauses mean federal officials cannot accept anything of value from foreign or domestic governments,” Washington, D.C., attorney general Karl Racine, who brought one of the suits, said at the time.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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