What are these emoluments you speak of?
by digby
You’ve heard by now that in the middle of an impeachment and foreign policy crisis, our psycho president announced that he had decided to hold the G7 next summer at his wholly-owned golf club in Florida, opening him up to more charges of graft and corruption.
Mulvaney goes on to provide an infomercial for Trump’s Doral resort. #corruption pic.twitter.com/bShnWi8mkf— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019
MULVANEY: “Again, anticipating your questions, how is this this is not emolument violation? Will the president profit from this? The president pretty much made it very clear since he got here, he doesn’t profit from being here. He has no interest in profiting from being here.” pic.twitter.com/wLY55ZHA5V— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019
Oh boy:
“To be clear, what you described is a quid pro quo” — Here’s Mick Mulvaney casually admitting that Trump held up aid to Ukraine as leverage to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the 2016 election pic.twitter.com/ylz7BKEmKd— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019
Paul Waldman reports:
It’s unlikely that the Senate will remove President Trump from office if or when he’s impeached, but the president isn’t taking any chances: He’s going to squeeze every last dime he can out of the presidency while he still has the opportunity.
Which is why the White House just announced that it has awarded the privilege of hosting next year’s Group of Seven summit of world leaders to the Trump Doral golf course in Miami.
As Post reporters Toluse Olorunnipa,David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell note, “That decision is without precedent in modern American history: The president used his public office to direct a massive contract to himself.”
Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney came before reporters Thursday and said — remarkably, with a straight face — that Trump’s resort was chosen solely because it is “the best physical facility for this meeting.” It’s pure coincidence that it just happens to be owned by Trump.
What’s more, when Mulvaney was asked if the White House would share documents illuminating the decision, he said no: “If you want to see our paper on how we did this, the answer is absolutely not.”
Trump’s blithe flaunting of this corruption, in the midst of a deepening impeachment inquiry — along with Mulvaney’s middle finger to basic accountability — may help build the case for his ultimate impeachment.
How Democrats can respond
In an interview, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Oversight and Judiciary committees, laid out a process by which Democrats might bear down harder on this latest corrupt misconduct.
Raskin told us he’s been discussing with other Democrats the prospect of holding a House vote on a resolution disapproving of Trump’s decision on Doral, as well as of his continued violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses via his acceptance of untold sums from foreign officials and governments, and the U.S. government.
As Raskin noted, if the House passes such a resolution, and Trump continues down this course — as he will surely do — the House would have made its opposition crystal clear. The emoluments clause permits presidents to accept such emoluments only if Congress approves them, and here the direct opposite would have happened.
At that point, Raskin argued, Democrats would have strong grounds to consider making this latest corruption — and the broader emoluments violations — part of their ongoing impeachment inquiry and potentially grounds for an appropriate article of impeachment as well.
Raskin pointed out that the G-7 corruption and the ongoing Ukraine scandal — in which Trump is pressuring a foreign government to help him rig the next U.S. election on his behalf — have a connecting thread.
“The president’s conversion of his public office into an instrument of private profit and political reelection is the cardinal sin of his presidency,” Raskin told us. “The government is not the president’s private property. The emoluments clauses are essential to framing the high crimes and misdemeanors of the president.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine a comprehensive impeachment resolution that does not refer to the president’s repeated and continuing violations,” Raskin continued. “The get-rich-quick scheme that the president has cooked up with the G-7 and Doral has the kind of alarming public clarity that the Ukraine shakedown does. The president is essentially writing his own impeachment articles.”
Waldman goes on to point out all the other violations of the emoluments clause, the promotional appearances at his properties, the foreign pay to play at his hotels, the endless, overwhelming graft.
Some of this is legally questionable; all of it is unethical, and the G-7 caper may be the most unethical action yet.
And while Trump waxes about how spectacular and convenient Doral is, G-7 summits are usually held in more isolated locations where establishing security for a collection of many of the world’s most important leaders is less of a challenge.
Doral, furthermore, has been described as run-down; the resort’s revenues are down, and a G-7 meeting could be just the ticket to give it publicity.
But all the money Trump ends up reaping from this scheme may help lead to his impeachment. Surely he views the trade-off as well worth it.
They must take up this emoluments stuff. A president blatantly using the office for his own financial benefit like this may be the crudest example of our descent into banana republicanism but it’s extremely important that they take a stand. It’s the best way to set us up for the necessary reforms that are required to stop this descent into oligarchy.
h/t to Spocko for the Youtube mashup.
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