Is There a Remedy for Presidential Profiteering?
In May, between the two payments, Trump, ignoring objections from his national security advisers over the UAE’s ties to China, approved a massive sale of cutting-edge AI computer chips to the UAE (a World Liberty spokesperson said the president and Steve Witkoff had had “no involvement” since the election and that the UAE deal had nothing to do with Trump’s chip decision. Trump told reporters he was not at current of the investment and that his sons “take care of it”.)
It is well known that Trump and his immediate family have exploited the presidency for personal gain on an unprecedented scale. Last summer, The New Yorker calculated that over the past decade these profits amounted to $3.4 billion. Six months later, at the end of his first year in office, this figure exceeded four billion. But the Emirati payment raises new questions, starting with the Constitution’s prohibition on public officials accepting any “gift” or “emolument” from a foreign state without Congressional consent. During Trump’s first term, his lawyers argued that renting hotel rooms at Trump properties to foreign states was not the kind of “compensation” the founders had in mind. They argued that it was a “fair value” exchange and that, in any case, Trump had returned the profits to the U.S. Treasury.
Trump refrained from entering into new trade deals outside the United States during his first term. In his second, he abandoned such scruples. Yet the Trump Organization maintains that it still avoids deals with foreign governments – a claim that the Emirates payment appears to taint. Will Trump say this is also a “fair value” trade and donate the profits?
Then there’s the secret. The audacity of the Trump family’s operations was, in some ways, Trump’s best defense against accusations of corruption. Because presidents cannot be expected to abandon all financial ties, government ethics rules rely primarily on public disclosure to allow voters and their elected representatives to judge whether a president is putting his personal interests ahead of those of the public. And, so far, Trump still hasn’t seemed embarrassed to brag about his side hustles. But if the Emirati payment was kept secret, what else could it be? World Liberty and Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from anonymous investors over the past year. Neither the companies nor the president have disclosed the sources of this money.
As the 2020 election approaches, Bob Bauer, counsel in the Obama White House, and Jack Goldsmith, deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush, published a book titled “After Trump: Rebuilding the Presidency.” In it, they propose reforms aimed at reducing the opportunities for abuse of executive power that Trump’s first term had exposed – opportunities that his second term took to the extreme. To address potential financial conflicts of interest, one proposal would require presidents to certify that they have entirely removed themselves from any role in private companies in which they hold ownership interests, without access to information about them that is not also publicly available. A second would force any such company to disclose its assets, liabilities and other stakeholders (which would prevent secret investment from a foreign government). A third would give teeth to the emoluments clause: any company linked to a president would be required to publicly declare any payment or benefit expected from an arm of a foreign state. If Congress does not agree within sixty days, a president would be forced to sell these interests.
Such measures are of course out of the question as long as Trump has a veto. But most of our current government ethics rules date back to a bipartisan reaction after the Watergate scandal. It is hardly impossible that Trump’s personal enrichment, to the tune of four billion dollars and counting, could trigger a similar wave. ♦
