Throughout Donald Trump’s time in the White House, he likely benefited from $13.6 million in payments from foreign governments, according to a new analysis by CREW. These payments represent an unprecedented violation of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and serve as a reminder of the further violations Trump is poised to bring into office should he return to the White House. 

This report builds on the work done by the House Oversight Committee earlier this year, which relied heavily on an incomplete set of documents provided by Trump’s accounting firm. To make up for the gaps in that information, CREW has pieced together additional details, where available, from our extensive tracking of the ways foreign governments used Trump’s businesses to curry favor with him and his administration, while enriching Trump personally. This is the most comprehensive view to date of Trump’s first term foreign emoluments—a staggering picture of corruption that would have been inconceivable to America’s founders.

During Trump’s presidency, CREW tracked what ultimately became thousands of conflicts of interest swirling around him and his businesses—an unheard of level of corruption caused by Trump’s unprecedented refusal to divest his business empire. Trump spent his time as president promoting the businesses he profited from while in office and rewarded the patrons who lined his pockets, both foreign and domestic, with access and influence in his administration.

Prior to taking office and throughout his tenure in the White House, the Trump administration and the Trump Organization claimed that Trump had sufficiently dealt with the conflicts caused by foreign income by donating the company’s revenue from foreign government sources to the U.S. Treasury. However, according to reporting late in his presidency, the company only donated $448,000—a fraction of the $13.6 million in payments documented here.

Methodology

In January, the House Oversight Committee’s Democratic staff published a report that used financial documents from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, showing that Trump received at least $7.8 million in emoluments from 20 foreign governments while in office. But even by their own estimation, the analysis was incomplete. Mazars was providing the documents in tranches, and when Republicans took over Congress in January 2023, incoming Chairman James Comer allowed Mazars to stop production of the information. As a result, Congress only received records for two years of Trump’s presidency, covering only four of his hundreds of businesses.

Comer’s decision to let Mazars stop providing documents also resulted in significant portions of the spending that are—and may remain forever—untraceable. For example, the committee only received documents covering part of Qatar’s spending at Trump properties, and they merely make reference to accounts at Trump properties tied to countries like Azerbaijan—a country where Trump has a deeply concerning business history—but provide no spending details.

Since CREW spent Trump’s presidency meticulously tracking the myriad ways his business interests and day-to-day work as president overlapped, we have built on the Oversight report with information gleaned from our research and other public reporting. The funds documented in the Oversight report and further enumerated here represent a best effort to quantify how much Trump likely benefited from foreign government money as president, but even as this analysis goes further than the Oversight report, and makes some assumptions based on scant public information, it is almost certainly a conservative estimate.

The totals in this report are inherently conservative, because Trump’s payments from foreign governments are often hard to quantify, if they can be tracked at all. For example, while in office, Trump received numerous trademarks from countries like China, Brazil and the UAE, while the government of the Irish county where one of his golf resorts resides granted a permit for an expansion of the property. These and other actions on the part of foreign governments are likely worth millions for Trump’s businesses, but the financial benefit is only included in the overall financial tally here if there was a clear, reasonable way to estimate its value. Thus, in addition to noting where our research reasonably pushes the totals higher, we will also highlight where income and benefits are known but difficult or impossible to quantify as a part of our overall total.

As CREW has previously reported, Trump’s own tax returns showed that he made up to $160 million from foreign sources during his time in office—one-tenth of the up to $1.6 billion he made from his businesses over that same time, according to his financial disclosures. That total includes his income from all sources: foreign properties, licensing deals and beyond—not just the foreign government spending we focus on in this report.

Finally, while this report focuses on government spending that Trump benefited from as president, it is not meant to downplay the tens of millions of dollars that Trump brought in from businesses around the world that can’t be traced back to government sources. These business entanglements, whether or not they are tied specifically to government spending, bring with them their own significant conflicts of interest. 

The sections below detail countries where we have identified applicable spending beyond what is detailed in the Oversight report. 

China: $5,730,430

Trump spent years trying to break into the Chinese market, and in 2014, he bragged about how popular his brand was in China. According to tracking by CREW, Trump received more than $5.7 million from Chinese government sources.

According to the House Oversight report, Trump took in $5,572,548 from China through the Chinese government’s patronage of Trump Tower, Trump Hotel DC and Trump Hotel Las Vegas. This number includes a $19,391 “advance deposit” to Trump’s DC Hotel by an “Embassy of China Delegation” for an August 2017 arrival date, but does not specify the duration of the stay. Because Chairman Comer allowed Mazars to stop providing documents, the committee was unable to determine the total spending by the Embassy or the length of the stay, so this amount is likely “only a fraction of the funds ultimately expended for a stay or event.” It also includes $195,662 paid to Trump Hotel Las Vegas by Chinese state-owned enterprise Hainan Airlines, for a 14-month stay beginning on November 4, 2016, though the Mazars documents do not show spending on additional services, as well as at least $5,357,495 in rent from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) at Trump Tower. 

At the time of the spending, HNA Group, an affiliate of Hainan Airlines, sought to improve its image in DC and gain US government approval of its targeted acquisitions. HNA executives enjoyed access to high-level Trump administration officials, like Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. While ICBC was spending at Trump businesses the bank came under scrutiny for doing business with front companies working for North Korea, benefitting North Korea’s sanctioned nuclear program. Despite widespread evidence of dealings with North Korea and calls from the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee for the Trump Administration to “apply maximum financial and diplomatic pressure” on Chinese banks that do business with North Korea, Trump did not take any action against the bank.

The report also mentions but does not include in its total a December 2017 advance deposit for $5,377 to Trump’s Las Vegas hotel by Chinese state-controlled telecommunications giant Huawei for an event in January 2018. We are including this payment because the Department of Defense included Huawei in its 2020 list of entities “owned or controlled” by the Chinese military. The US government has long considered Huawei to be a national security threat, and officials continued to sound the alarm about the company while it was doing business with Trump. While officials in Congress and the Trump Administration took a hard line against Huawei and other “Chinese companies operating in a manner contrary to U.S. national security,” Trump did the opposite, and announced that he would remove Huawei from the Department of Commerce’s “blacklist” of foreign companies not allowed to buy American products without US government approval. While Huawei remained on the blacklist, the Trump administration granted six temporary licenses allowing it to do business with American companies.  

The Oversight committee report mentions monthly fees that a subsidiary of Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC paid on a unit in Trump World Tower throughout Trump’s entire term in office. In March 2018 a Chinese state-owned media company reported that CEFC had been taken over by a state-owned investment firm. Due to lack of independent reporting, the committee could not verify when CEFC became a state-owned entity, and did not include payments from the company in its total. Despite the oversight committee’s reservations and CEFC’s ostensible status as a private company until 2018, experts on the Chinese economy say it is unlikely that CEFC operated independently from the government. According to the documents provided by Mazars the company paid a monthly charge of $3,177.20 to Trump World Tower in 2018. If CEFC paid this amount each year Trump was in office, this results in $152,505 in Chinese government emoluments to Trump World Tower.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of Chinese government money poured into Trump’s pockets. China provided Trump with emoluments with an unquantifiable monetary value by granting Trump’s company approval for 46 trademarks while he was president. As of last year, Trump had 114 trademarks in China in total. Up until he entered office Trump was embroiled in a battle for the rights over his own name, but his ability to secure trademarks in China improved after he became president. 

United Kingdom: $3,991,000

The United Kingdom gave Trump businesses almost $4 million in emoluments through economic assistance programs while he was president, according to CREW’s tracking. There is no indication of spending from the United Kingdom in the Mazars documents, so the House Oversight Committee excluded the country from its report.

Both Trump’s Aberdeen and Turnberry golf courses in Scotland absolutely hemorrhaged money from the time he added them to his portfolio in 2012 and 2014. Between purchasing and developing the two properties Trump spent more than $300 million in cash. Turnberry only made its first profit in 2022, while Aberdeen still remains in the red. In Trump’s first year in office, the properties lost a combined $5.7 million, and another $4.9 million in his second. Once Trump entered office he took measures to direct business to these two huge liabilities, including asking his ambassador to Britain to see if the British government would steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to Turnberry.

The Scottish government gave emoluments to Trump indirectly through tax economic assistance programs meant for businesses in need. In 2017, Turnberry received a £110,000 (approximately $141,000 at the time) tax rebate as part of an emergency bailout intended to help struggling small businesses. The rebate came after complaints from small business owners about a rise in property taxes and was given to hospitality companies across Scotland, including those who were unaffected by the economic downturn. Earlier that year Trump said Turnberry was doing “unbelievably” well and the resort’s general manager said it was expecting exceptional profits.

But it wasn’t until COVID hit that Trump’s businesses really started ramping up its receipts from the UK government. In 2020, Trump Turnberry and Trump International Scotland brought in a combined $3.7 million for furlough support, even though the same reports show that the businesses cut 273 jobs. After Trump left office, The Scotsman reported that Trump’s Scottish businesses received as much as £575,000 via the UK job retention program with at least £110,000 (approximately $150,000 at the time) claimed while he was still in office.

Earlier this month, Eric Trump announced the opening of a new golf course in Scotland, setting Trump up for even more similar emoluments in a potential second term.

Qatar: $1,103,244

CREW’s analysis shows Qatar paid $1,103,244 to Trump properties while he was president. That total includes over $600,000 more than the $465,744 that the Oversight Committee reported, which only covered fees to Trump World Tower for four total units that the government owned at different points throughout Trump’s presidency.

In 2018, the Qatari mission to the UN purchased a unit in Trump World Tower for $6.5 million, and then sold another unit that, the report states, “incurred lower monthly charges” than the one it purchased. As a result, the amount of money Qatar was paying to Trump’s company every month increased from $8,592 to $9,540. 

A previous Oversight report noted, but this one did not include in its tally, an additional $300,000 spent between January and April 2018 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Most of this spending was associated with a reservation under the name of the Qatari royal family who, the report says, “reportedly dominates Qatari government ministries.” This all took place around the same time that the Qatari mission purchased a $6.5 million unit in Trump World Tower. The Oversight Committee left the spending by the royal family out after the Ambassador of Qatar asserted the guests were private citizens. While it is entirely reasonable that the Oversight Committee would take the Qatari government’s word that the payment was for an extended stay that only involved “private citizens,” it is at least equally likely in context that the government paid for the visits. We’re including that amount here to provide a more reasonable estimate based on public records.

It was also in 2018 that Qatar began paying another Trump property, which isn’t referenced in the Oversight report. In this instance, the US subsidiary of the Qatari sovereign wealth fund appears to have spent $450,000 a year, according to an estimate based on square footage and average rates in the building calculated by Forbes’s Dan Alexander, starting sometime before August 2018, to rent an office at Trump’s 555 California St. property in San Francisco. Trump owned 30 percent of the building, meaning his cut would have been about $135,000 a year, for a total of $337,500.

In 2017, just prior to when this spending was taking place, Qatar was locked in an international dispute with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that had led to a blockade. By June, Trump was tweeting out statements critical of Qatar—suggesting the country was involved in the “funding of Radical Ideology” and later clarifying that he was referring to terrorism—which sent US officials into damage control. Trump reportedly met with the Qatari emir on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in September 2017 and expressed support for Qatar’s efforts to fight terrorism, but it was still rather conspicuous that after entities tied to the Qatari government spent January to March of 2018 patronizing Trump properties, Trump sat down in the White House with the emir. 

Saudi Arabia: $885,422

CREW’s tracking shows Saudi Arabia paid $885,422 to Trump properties, $270,000 more than the Oversight Committee found in the Mazars documents. The Oversight report catalogs $615,422 in spending by the Saudi government at two Trump properties, Trump World Tower in New York and the Trump International Hotel in DC, starting in 2017 and running through the end of Trump’s presidency. Saudi Arabia has owned the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower since 2001.

The Oversight report total excludes a significant amount of known expenditures flowing from the Kingdom. While the report did track $78,342 spent at Trump’s DC hotel from March 7-15, 2018, this is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg. Lobbying documents from May of 2017 show that a Saudi-funded lobbying firm spent more than $270,000 at the hotel, but the ledgers provided to the Oversight Committee did not detail who precisely was paying for the stay, so the costs were excluded from their tally. However, they are included in this analysis because, as the Washington Post reported, the lobbying firm in question has “has long represented the Saudi government in the United States.”

One significant expenditure that is not included in the Oversight report or this analysis is the payment for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s visit to New York, during which many traveling with him stayed at the Trump International Hotel in the city. The spending was so significant that a letter obtained by the Washington Post showed that the property’s quarterly revenue jumped 13%.

No details were ever provided showing exactly how much Trump—whose company manages, but does not own, the building—received related to this stay. The total, therefore, is not included here, despite the reportedly hefty spending.

When running for president in 2015, Trump bragged about the millions of dollars that the Saudis spend at his properties. “Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” Trump told a crowd in Alabama. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”

Not long after announcing his run for president in 2015, Trump registered multiple companies with names tied to the Kingdom, suggesting an interest in building his business profile in the country. Saudi Arabia seems to have responded in kind, ramping up spending at Trump’s businesses. 

As president, Trump made Saudi Arabia his first trip abroad while in office, and he shocked both the intelligence community and foreign policy experts for his refusal to accept the conclusions of both US and international investigations that pointed to MBS’s involvement in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Later, in defiance of members of Congress who were holding up sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Trump declared a national emergency to sell the country weapons anyway.

As CREW has noted elsewhere, a second Trump administration would almost certainly see even more conflicts with Saudi Arabia, particularly with the creation in 2021 of the LIV Golf league, which has already hosted six tournaments at Trump properties. 

India: $538,700

According to the Oversight report, the Indian government paid at least $282,764 to Trump for stays at Trump World Tower and Trump’s DC hotel. CREW’s analysis shows the actual number is closer to $538,000. The Oversight report includes a $18,580 payment by the Indian Embassy for eight Indian diplomats to stay at the Trump Hotel in DC as well as $264,184 from the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations for fees incurred at two units owned in Trump World Tower.

The committee report notes that in 2018 the Permanent Mission paid an additional $13,983 in fees on its unit at Trump World Tower, but does not include these payments in its total. Assuming the Permanent Mission paid this fee for four years, then India paid Trump an additional $55,936. The Oversight Committee left out that the state-owned Bank of India rented office space in San Francisco’s 555 California Street office building from 2018 until December 2019 at the latest. At the time Trump owned about 30% of the building. In his book White House Inc. Forbes journalist and author Dan Alexander estimates that India likely paid over $100,000 per year in rent. Assuming the bank paid rent for 2018 and 2019, Trump would have made over $200,000 in rent from India. 

In no country was the line between Trump’s business empire and presidency blurred as much as in India, and under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, Trump’s businesses there thrived. By the time he became president, Trump had been conducting business in India for over a decade and had five projects in various stages of development. Trump also already had a relationship with Prime Minister Modi, who he met in 2014 through his business partner, state legislator Mangal Prabhat Lodha. Legal trouble for Lodha stalled the development of Trump’s Mumbai Tower, but investigations halted once Modi was elected Prime Minister. 

Intermingling between the Trump Organization and the Indian government was commonplace during the Trump Administration. Trump businesses received endless promotion and benefits from the Indian government while in office. Prime Minister Modi showered Trump with praise when he visited the United States in 2017. Promotional material for the Trump Tower in Mumbai flexed connections to the American president and his brand as a marketing point. Shortly after Ivanka Trump visited India in 2017, Modi’s party approved building clearances for the Trump Tower in Gurgaon in “no time.” In February 2018 Trump Organization executive Donald Trump Jr. traveled to India to promote Trump Organization real estate developments in multiple cities. During this trip he had a closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Modi, and according to the Oversight report, netted $15 million in real estate sales for the Gurgaon developments.

Trump repaid Modi by lauding him as a proponent of religious freedom on the world stage, despite Modi’s record as a nationalist who has implemented controversial anti-Muslim policies. Under his leadership “religious persecution and Islamophobia have increased sharply” in India. 

Trump showcased the strong strategic partnerships between the US and India by appearing alongside Prime Minister Modi at the “Howdy, Modi!” mega summit in Houston, Texas. Over 50,000 Indian-Americans attended the event, making it one of the largest receptions for a foreign leader in US history.

Kuwait: $378,372

The Oversight report tallies $303,372 from the government of Kuwait based on the Mazars documents. This includes the costs of two national day events held at Trump’s DC hotel and a unit that Kuwait has owned in Trump World Tower since 2012. 

When Trump was elected in 2016, Kuwait abruptly shifted its national day celebration from the Four Seasons in Washington, DC to Trump’s hotel, a move apparently aimed at currying favor with the new president—and benefiting him financially. The embassy would go on to hold two more national day events in 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic hit. The final event is not included in the tally produced by the Oversight Committee because they did not receive Mazars documents covering the event because it took place in 2019. Therefore, we have added in an additional $75,000 to the tally, which is in line with the costs of the previous two.

In 2020, Trump awarded Kuwait’s ruling emir the Legion of Merit, an award that can only be given by the president and hadn’t been bestowed on anyone since 1991.

Ireland: $126,097

The documents provided by Mazars to the Oversight Committee do not contain any indications of emoluments from Ireland. However, CREW’s tracking of conflicts of interest between Trump properties and foreign governments shows otherwise.

Trump added the Doonbeg golf course to his portfolio years before entering office, but by the time he became president it had never turned a profit and was hemorrhaging money–Trump bought Doonbeg for $20 million in 2014 and put $30 million into renovating the property. He spent another $9.2 million on renovations in 2015 and 2016. By the end of 2018, Doonbeg’s financial statements showed $12 million in losses.

Trump must have sought to help put Doonbeg back in the black during his 2019 trip to Europe where he shone the spotlight on the property. According to press reports Trump insisted on flying over the golf course in Marine One. Despite having meetings in Paris and on the other side of Ireland he insisted on returning to Doonbeg at night to stay. He told the resort’s managing director that he “really wanted to get back” to Doonbeg to “have a look over” the property and spoke with a local official about “the important role that the resort in Doonbeg plays in [the] local economy.” Vice President Mike Pence visited Ireland that fall, and stayed at Doonbeg after being urged by Trump to do so.

After Trump’s trip to the property, Irish press reported that local police paid Doonbeg over $119,464 in catering fees to feed officers stationed to protect the president. Documents show that the police paid almost $400,000 to 11 local food providers with Doonbeg receiving 30% of that sum. The police also paid Doonbeg another $6,633 for accommodations. 

Trump may have promised to pursue “no new foreign deals” in office, but the Trump Organization continued to develop international projects that were in the works, including Doonbeg. In 2019, barely two weeks after Eric Trump went on TV to claim “when my father became commander in chief of this country, we got out of all international business,” the Trump Organization cheerfully announced that the local government granted planning permission to significantly expand the resort, adding a new ballroom, leisure facilities and 53 more holiday homes at a cost of €38 million.

Trump’s business interests in Ireland certainly benefited from the promotion. According to his tax returns he brought in $24,436,551 from businesses in Ireland while in office. In 2019 Doonbeg made its first profit, according to Trump’s personal financial disclosure covering that year. In his candidate report covering 2022 he claimed to have made $6.2 million at Doonbeg. 

Republic of Congo: $135,943

The Oversight report doesn’t include any spending by the Republic of Congo, but Trump likely benefited from tens of thousands of dollars in potentially laundered funds from the family that has run the country for roughly 40 of the last 46 years.

In 2014, the daughter of kleptocratic Congolese leader Denis Sassou Nguesso bought a $7 million unit in Trump World Tower in New York. Apartment 32G was purchased for $7 million in cash by a shell company thought to include $20 million in taxpayer money from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The story itself is a long, convoluted one, as Global Witness detailed in 2019, but the luxury apartment is still owned by the firm that purchased it in 2014, meaning Trump’s company has likely been making thousands of dollars in management fees on the property every month for the last ten years, including the four years he was in office. Global Witness pegs those costs at $2,832.14 per month at a minimum (in 2014 dollars), meaning that Trump would have received more than $135,943 from the property during his four years in office. 

Romania: $27,000

The Oversight report noted that more than a dozen countries and entities including Romania had accounts at Trump properties, but Mazars did not provide records showing how much Romania spent. 

Therefore, not included in the Oversight report was a $27,000 payment from Romania to a Trump property. In 2018 CREW found that the Romanian Consulate in Chicago moved its National Day celebration to Trump’s Chicago hotel after holding it at the historic Chicago Cultural Center for five years in a row. The event was attended by more than 300 people including Romanian and Illinois state officials. 

Trump welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis at the White House the following summer, where he gifted Iohannis a “Make Romania Great Again” hat. According to reports, Iohannis sought “Trump’s blessing” ahead of Romania’s presidential elections.

The tip of the iceberg

We may never know the true extent of foreign emoluments given to Trump, but we are confident that what is detailed here is just the tip of the iceberg. In countries like Indonesia, for example, where Trump has business interests linked to government officials, we have no way of knowing how much of the millions he made in office came from sources connected to the government. And that’s just one example in a long list of countries where Trump may have benefited from millions in emoluments we could not include here for lack of definitive proof tying the financial benefits to government payments or a reliable way to determine their value. 

Additional notable examples of possible payments from foreign governments include Egypt and Panama:

  • Egypt: In the final weeks of the 2016 election, Trump wrote a $10 million check to his campaign that was structured as a loan, but never repaid. Trump had just met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi a few weeks prior to the loan, and according to CNN, the transfer led to a three-year investigation into whether it was tied to $10 million in cash withdrawn from the National Bank of Egypt five days before Trump became president. Prosecutors were unable to find definitive proof that the money made it into Trump’s bank account, but there are also significant lingering questions about how thoroughly the DOJ, particularly under Attorney General Bill Barr, actually pursued the investigation of a then-sitting president. Once in office, though, Trump referred to Sisi as “my favorite dictator,” sending millions in military aid that had been previously withheld, and Sisi was one of the first foreign leaders to meet with Trump at the White House.
  • Panama: While Trump was president, the Panamanian government supported his Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower by funding sewer and water pipe construction after the original contractor went bankrupt. In 2018, Trump Organization lawyers appealed to President Juan Carlos Varela for help with a control dispute over the property, appearing to try unsuccessfully to leverage the presidency for favorable treatment. Trump’s company was later sued by a private equity fund for allegedly pocketing funds intended for the Panamanian government.
  • South Korea: In a subsequent report, we will explore how, just months after entering office, Trump may have benefitted from more than $15 million in debt relief that may have come from a South Korean company that was controlled at the time by the state-owned Korea Development Bank.

As detailed above, Trump’s refusal to divest his businesses led to numerous instances where Trump acted in ways that appeared to benefit his own personal finances rather than the national interest of the country he served. It was concern over this kind of corruption, or even the appearance of corruption, that prompted the founders to include the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the Constitution in the first place. 

Conflicts of interest like Trump’s present far more concerns than direct payments and gifts alone. For example, Trump’s financial ties to foreign countries opened the door to those countries using those flows of money as leverage. Any of the countries paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent, fees or other costs to Trump properties could threaten to withdraw, and his properties in foreign countries could find themselves in financial jeopardy should Trump anger powerful people in those countries.

This is not purely theoretical; in the wake of Trump’s trade tariffs in 2018, one member of the Canadian parliament suggested the need for targeted sanctions against Trump’s businesses in the country. This was no minor threat: During his presidency, Trump brought in more money from Canadian sources—$36.5 million—than from any other foreign country except the UK, according to a CREW analysis of Trump’s tax returns. Yet, there is no accounting for Canada in this report because there is no data relating specifically to the Canadian government’s payments to Trump or his businesses, should they exist.

In Türkiye, where Trump had admitted as a candidate that he had “a little conflict of interest” because of his “major, major building in Istanbul,” President Erdoğan threatened to remove the Trump name from his property as a result of Trump’s Muslim Ban. Trump then spent much of his presidency acting favorably to the country—suddenly pulling out of northern Syria, abandoning America’s Kurdish allies after a call with Erdoğan and staying silent as the Turkish president’s bodyguards beat peaceful protesters in the street in Washington, DC. 

Conclusion

Trump’s conflicts of interest and the foreign emoluments they led to stained his first term in office, and he has given no indication that his second term will be any different. In a potential second term, Trump’s businesses are expected to receive millions of dollars in constitutionally prohibited payments. When asked whether he would divest from his businesses during a town hall event ahead of the Iowa caucuses in January of this year, Trump deflected from the question, saying that the Oversight Committee report’s $7.8 million estimate is just “a small amount of money.” In other words, the threat of these emoluments has only intensified—and Trump is not taking public concerns seriously.

Considering that Trump was able to get away with receiving millions of dollars in emoluments while in office—with the support of his allies in Congress—there is no reason to believe his infractions in a second term would be anything but horrendous. And as they did during his first term, foreign governments would jump at the opportunity to line Trump’s pockets to curry favor with his administration. 

As CREW recently laid out, the specter of a second Trump administration or any future administration that demonstrates a similar disdain for rules aimed at protecting against foreign influence, it is imperative that Congress work to establish a detailed set of rules that will ensure that the president and the vice president are working at all times to promote the national interest, rather than their own personal financial interests, while in office. 

Read More in Reports