Is history Repeating Itself?
Reading about Donald Trump since the election brings to mind this cartoon by Gary Trudeau in the summer of the Nixon Impeachment trial.
As James Fallows has documented, tinyurl.com/... Trump went through the campaign breaking one after another of the norms that make our political system work. The sheer number of broken norms and the speed with which Trump crashed through them seemed to overwhelm the press and his opponents. Now he is continuing the pattern with a succession of alarming appointments and reckless behavior.
Thus far, Trump has broken only norms; he hasn’t (as far as we know) broken any laws yet. So all his opponents can do is protest and state their disapproval.
But Trump seems to be on the verge of actually breaking the law on Inauguration Day, and Congress should act now to stop him. What law? The Constitution. The very law that Congress is already sworn to uphold, and that Trump may start violating the moment he takes the oath of office.
Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution provides that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United states] shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, of Title, of any kind whatsoever, from any King, Prince, of foreign State.”
Because he hasn’t released his tax returns, there is a lot we don’t know about Trumps’s sources of income. But we know that his tax returns report personal income from around 500 limited liability corporations. We know that the Trump Organization has contracts with businesses all over the world and it is quite likely that some of those businesses are owned – at least in part – by foreign governments. If so, Trump is already receiving emoluments from foreign states. And if he doesn’t somehow end those payments or get permission from Congress to continue receiving those payments, he’ll manage to both swear to uphold the Constitution and start violating it before he starts giving his Inaugural address.
Even by Trump standards, this would be a somewhat breathtaking stunt. A stunt that Congress should act immediately to prevent.
Even without Trump’s tax returns, Congress could act. Though Trump has hidden the sources of most of his income, it is public information that one of the tenants of Trump Tower is the Bank of China. tinyurl.com/...; An investment arm of the Chinese government owns about 65 % of the shares of the Bank of China, en.wikipedia.org/... so the rent paid by the bank comes from a foreign state. Members of Congress should point this out and demand that Trump come clean about all his income so the American people can know how much influence other countries may have on him. It’s hard to believe that even Trump’s most adoring fans would be happy to find out that he has turned down the salary offered by the United States government, while secretly being paid by China and – quite possibly – other countries that do not have our best interests in mind. The founders knew that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” and Congress should make sure we know who is paying Trump the piper.
Nixon took Congress off the hook, not by robbing a bank, but by resigning. Were it not for extraordinary pressure form Congress, he wouldn’t have done that. We cannot afford to let our elected leaders sit by while Trump does terrible damage, just because he hasn’t already robbed a bank. They need to prevent him from breaking the law, rather than wait until it happens and then trying to impeach him.
The advice of congressional staffers is that citizens have more impact if they call the local offices of their senators and representatives, and show up whenever members of Congress hold town halls and meetings. So please, please call, write, and otherwise badger your elected representatives to get them to act on this. Many will be home in their districts during the Thanksgiving holiday, so do it now. And when you gather with family and friends urge them to act too.
There is so much scary news now that figuring out how what to do can be paralyzing. If we focus attention on this issue, it could really help. There really are few legal safeguards now between the US as we know it and a capricious, authoritarian regime. This is a legal safeguard that Congress can and should use in order to protect the Constitution.
This editorial in the New York Times is a good place to start for more info on the issue of Trump’s financial web and the dangers to the US if he does not divest his holdings as have past presidents: tinyurl.com/... After Trump’s meeting this weekend with Indian businessmen, it is hard to believe that he’ll do the right thing unless forced to. As Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, told the Times “There does not seem to be any sign of a meaningful separation of Trump government operations and his business operations.” tinyurl.com/...
