Democrats denounce that Trump's companies received $7.8 million from foreign governments during his presidency

Democrats fight back. While Republicans in the House of Representatives have spent years trying to find evidence that the current president, Joe Biden, benefited from his son's business abroad, Democrats released a comprehensive 156-page report this Thursday detailing the payments made by foreign governments to Donald Trump's companies while he was president. The report, titled The White House for sale, has been prepared by the members of the Oversight Commission of the House of Representatives. It denounces that Trump's companies received 7.8 million dollars (7.1 million euros at the current exchange rate) while he was a tenant in the White House.

Most of the payments, detailed almost to the penny, correspond to foreign leaders who stayed at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, although there are also disbursements to his Las Vegas hotel, Trump World Tower and Trump Tower (where offices are rented ), these last two in New York. These payments had already been the subject of scrutiny in the past because the ninth section of Article 1 of the United States Constitution in its anti-corruption clause prohibits presidents from accepting money, payments or gifts “of any kind, from any king, prince or State.” foreigner” without the consent of Congress. Trump never asked for authorization.

Now, the disbursements are systematized in that document, which lists around twenty foreign countries, led by China, with $5.57 million in charge of the embassy in Washington and Chinese public companies; Saudi Arabia, with $615,422; Qatar, with $465,744; Kuwait ($303,372); India ($282,764), Malaysia ($248,962), and Afghanistan, with $154,750. Payments from 14 other countries are reflected below $100,000. Neither Spain nor any Latin American country appears on the list.

“These payments were made while these governments promoted specific foreign policy objectives with the Trump Administration and even, at times, with President Trump himself, and while they requested specific actions from the United States to advance their own domestic policy objectives,” says the executive summary of the report.

“By elevating his personal financial interests and the political priorities of corrupt foreign powers above the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear mandates of the Constitution and the careful precedent established and observed by every previous commander in chief,” points out the document in an introduction signed by Congressman Jamie Raskin.

During Trump's presidency, Democrats began investigating those payments. The investigation led to a legal brawl that reached the Supreme Court, but it declined to rule, claiming that the case no longer had a purpose because he had left the White House. A federal court rejected in 2020, for procedural reasons, a lawsuit filed by Democratic congressmen, but without going into the legality or illegality of the payments.

In any case, part of the documentation received in that unfinished investigation sent by the auditor Mazars is what has now been used to prepare the report.

At the time, the Trump-controlled Justice Department argued that the anti-corruption clause of the Constitution did not refer to profits derived from the president's business dealings outside of his official duties, but only to the receipt of compensation for personal services or of honors and gifts linked to his position. The border is, in any case, somewhat blurred because staying at Trump's hotel, for example, could be interpreted as a way to gain the president's favor.

That the Democrats now return to the fray has a special meaning because the Republicans have approved an investigation for a possible political process (impeachment) to the current president, Joe Biden, in which they try to find evidence that he benefited when he was vice president from his son Hunter Biden's businesses. For now, his efforts have failed.

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