House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sent a letter to former President Donald Trump demanding that he return the more than $7 million his businesses made from foreign governments while he was president.
Last week, Raskin released a report detailing that 20 foreign governments spent at least $7.8 million at properties owned by Trump while he was president and claimed this was a violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which prohibits sitting presidents from taking money from foreign states without the approval of Congress, which Trump did not have.
Now, Raskin is demanding that Trump return that money.
“The Constitution makes clear that as President, ‘without the Consent of Congress,’ you were prohibited from accepting ‘any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,’” Raskin said in the letter. “You did not seek or obtain Congress’s consent to keep any of the at least $7.8 million in foreign emoluments you raked in as President. As such, you violated the Constitution you were sworn to ‘preserve, protect, and defend.’”
The findings in the report are based on information provided to the committee by Mazars, Trump’s former accounting firm, which was subpoenaed by then-Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) when Democrats controlled the House. Since the GOP House takeover, Democrats have not had access to his accounting, so Raskin is also demanding “a full accounting of all payments, benefits, or other emoluments you received from foreign governments or their agents,” while president.
While Trump did resign from his post as head of the companies while he was president, he did not fully divest or place any of the assets into a blind trust as many experts said he should do. And, on Wednesday, during a Fox News town hall, he signaled that he would not divest from his businesses should he become president again.
“If I have a hotel and somebody comes in from China, that’s a small amount of money,” Trump said when asked if he would divest. “I was doing services for that. People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels, and they stayed there and they paid. I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing.”
Trump’s businesses and whether he illegally profited from foreign governments have been litigated heavily in the past, rising to the Supreme Court, which tossed out the lawsuits in 2021.
On social media, Trump and his family mocked Raskin’s report, saying it was “a joke” and that all profits made on behalf of foreign governments at their hotels while Trump was president were “voluntarily donated to the United States Treasury.”
Raskin pushed back on this, claiming that the emoluments clause does not simply prohibit “profits” from foreign governments but prohibits taking any money from them and that by the Trump family doing so, it violated the Constitution.
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“As the report explains, it is hard to imagine a more ludicrous and half-hearted approach to the categorical prohibition in the Constitution than The Trump Organization’s ‘voluntary donation’ policy, which was grossly underinclusive in several other respects,” Raskin wrote. “Your acceptance of foreign emoluments while in office was a stunning violation of the U.S. Constitution — and a profound betrayal of the interests of the United States and the trust of the American people. “
A Trump spokesperson and House Oversight Committee Republican spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
