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Rep. Jamie Raskin has taken a leading role in helping expose the foreign money Donald Trump received during his presidency. But that was just the first step. Politico reported late last week on the second.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, is escalating his standoff with former President Donald Trump over foreign government payments his businesses received during his presidency. Raskin, in a Friday letter to Trump, is demanding the former president return roughly $7.8 million, following a report released by Democrats last week that found his businesses accepted at least that amount from foreign governments during his time in office.
For those just joining us, it was a couple of weeks ago when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a devastating 156-page report called “White House For Sale.” Relying on documents from Trump’s former accounting firm, congressional researchers determined that the Republican’s businesses received “at least“ $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments — over a two year period — while Trump was in the White House, despite the prohibitions in the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
As an NBC News report added, China was “the leading spender, paying more than $5.5 million to Trump-owned properties.”
Last week, the subject came up during his latest town-hall event on Fox News, and the Republican didn’t make any effort to deny the accuracy of the Democrats’ findings. Asked about $7.8 million in foreign funds, the likely GOP nominee said, “I was doing services for that. People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels, because I have the best hotels. I have the best clubs. I have the best clubs. I have great stuff. And they stay there, and they pay. I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing....”
It sounded an awful lot like a confirmation of everything House Democrats alleged in their report. As we discussed soon after, Trump’s defense, evidently, is that he believes it’s fine that he took millions of dollars from foreign governments during his presidency because he also provided services in exchange for the money.
That was on Wednesday of last week. Two days later, the former president received a letter from Raskin.
“I write today to demand that you immediately return to the American people the $7,886,072 that we know you have accepted from foreign governments in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause — a fact you admitted, once again, at a Fox News town hall this week,” the Maryland Democrat wrote.
“Given that this is a fraction of your unconstitutional collections from foreign governments and that we do not yet know the complete sum of foreign money you accepted while in office, I also demand that you give Congress a full accounting of the money, benefits and other emoluments ‘of any kind whatever’ you pocketed from foreign governments or their agents during your term as President and that you return the total sum of these foreign emoluments to the American people by writing a check to the U.S. Treasury.”
As best as I can tell, the former president has not yet written back to the Oversight Committee’s ranking member. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.