Trump took $7.8 mn in foreign cash while in office. He'd do it again

By Timothy L. O'Brien

Donald Trump and his businesses hauled in at least $7.8 million from foreign governments and officials of 20 countries during his presidency. The bulk of that came from China, but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others also chipped in relatively modest amounts, according to a new report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

Trump has never been as wealthy as he has claimed, but he’s still a rich man, and $7.8 million may not mean as much to him as it would to an average wage earner. It’s also an election year, and in an era of fractious and fractured politics it would be convenient to dismiss the committee’s report as a partisan Democratic hit job.

Latching on to either of those arguments to let Trump off the hook would be a mistake. The issue of whether the Oval Office’s former occupant was on the take and could be swayed on policy issues because he’s a malleable financial mark rises well above those critiques. After all, national security is at stake if a president puts his or her wallet before the public interest.

Greed and financial conflicts of interest will certainly haunt the White House if Trump returns for a second term. He’ll also undoubtedly feel empowered to freely line his pockets if he winds up an escapee from two impeachments, several criminal and civil cases and a previous election loss. The quickest path to Trump’s heart has always involved plopping a bag of cash on his desk, and battle-hardened realists overseas who are seeking geopolitical, military or economic advantages over the US are well aware of that.

Separating politicians from opportunities to grift, and holding them accountable when they do, is a clear nonpartisan hallmark of good government. It animated the departure of former Republican Representative George Santos of New York from Congress and investigations into Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, both of whom stand accused of engaging in carnivalesque looting. It animates, in theory, probes into Hunter Biden’s financial woes and his proximity to his father. And it animates concerns about how members of Congress go about trading stocks, perhaps with the help of inside information.

Trump shouldn’t be held to a lesser standard than his former colleagues in the federal government, and yet he has been — and may continue to be if valuable evidence such as the Oversight Committee’s report gets swept under the rug. This is due, in part, to the reality that presidents aren’t bound by the same federal conflict-of-interest laws and guidelines meant to police other politicians. But as I noted about seven years ago, Trump entered the White House with “more potential business and financial conflicts of interest than any other president in US history.” Nothing about that problem has changed.

And even if Trump isn’t subjected to federal ethics guidelines, he’s still not at liberty to go on a money hunt while in office. The framers of the US Constitution long ago anticipated the dangers bribery posed to government integrity and carved out an “emoluments clause” that forbids presidents from receiving any gift or benefit from a foreign power.

Even the Constitution didn’t make it easy to keep Trump tethered, however. Democrats on the Oversight Committee had to wrestle Trump and his various representatives to get the documentation they needed to substantiate the observations in their report. While the Constitution notes that presidents can accept money and gifts from foreign governments only with congressional approval, the committee’s report points out that during his presidency Trump “never once went to Congress to seek its consent.”

As Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, pointed out, the implications of all of this are overt: “The report’s detailed findings make clear that we don’t have the laws in place to deal with a president who is willing to brazenly convert the presidency into a business for self-enrichment and wealth maximization with the collusive participation of foreign states.”

While president, Trump exchanged love letters and engaged in reckless patty-cake with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and hobnobbed embarrassingly and dangerously with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some of this arose from Trump’s own authoritarian instincts and his fascination with fully realized dictators. It also surfaced because he had dollar signs dancing in his eyes. He spoke openly about possible real estate deals awaiting him on Kim’s home turf, and he actively pursued a real estate deal in Moscow during his campaign for president in 2016.

The Oversight Committee found that $5.5 million of the funds it identified as flowing to Trump during his presidency came from China. A large state-owned Chinese bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, was among the biggest tenants of Trump’s signature New York property, Trump Tower, during his presidency. The committee’s report notes that despite calls from Republicans to pressure banks like ICBC to cut financial ties to North Korea to help curtail its nuclear ambitions, Trump declined to take formal action against the bank during his first year in office.

Was this a quid pro quo? We’d need to know more, of course, but on its face it’s more than reasonable to suspect so. And it’s much more than reasonable to see a second Trump term as a significant national security threat because of episodes such as these.

The amount of money Trump received while president is irrelevant. How we found out that he received it is irrelevant. What matters are foundational principles of good government and Trump’s unchecked ability to continue shredding them.


Disclaimer: This is a Bloomberg Opinion piece, and these are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper