What a difference a Nunes makes. Now that the White House creeper has stepped out of the way, things seem to be moving toward a minor display of intelligence by the House committee on the same.
Though it’s disappointing that the hearing for Comey and Rogers is to be closed rather than a continuation of the open hearings that were abruptly ended as soon as it became clear they were going to surface something other than an instant exoneration for Trump, at least the public is going to finally get a chance to hear Sally Yates’ take on the matter.
Meanwhile the House Oversight Committee, and its suddenly in a hurry to retire chairman, have a question of another sort for Trump concerning those pesky profits from foreign sources.
… details of the plan to donate profits from foreign government payments, however, are still unclear. Meanwhile, recent news accounts have reported that the Trump organization may have received payments from foreign governments since President Trump’s inauguration.
A few days before the inauguration, Trump announced that he would put aside profits from foreign governments and “donate” them to the treasury. A couple of weeks later, Trump even named a couple of people to oversee this process.
However, that seems to be about as far as things went. How profits were to be identified and donated remains a mystery, and foreign officials who stay at Trump hotels, or profits generating when foreign governments hand over valuable trademarks, don’t seem to be sliding down that custom chute into the Treasury’s basement.
And surprisingly enough, Oversight is doing some … oversight. They’ve asked Trump to hand over a wad of documents, including.
- How they’re calculating profits.
- The process for separating these funds and sending them to the government.
- Whether or not they’re taking these “donations” as a tax break.
Since no profits have yet appeared, it’s all a bit academic at the moment, and it’s not clear that there’s a real deadline on Oversight’s request. But it’s interesting that Chaffetz is bothering to ask.