Well, well, well…
According to a report issued on Thursday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, Donald Trump used his position as president to enrich himself and his family by raking in millions of dollars from foreign governments. USA Today is reporting the 156-page report accuses the former president took in at least $7.8 million from countries that include China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The report unequivocally states that, based upon documents and records that have been reviewed, there is a "stunning web of millions of dollars in payments made by foreign governments and their agents directly to Trump-owned businesses, while President Trump was in the White House.”
While Republicans are playing wack-a-mole trying to find payments to Joe Biden from foreign sources — and only ending up with his brother paying back a $200,000 loan to him, and Hunter paying back a $1,500 car loan while Joe wasn't a political figure at the time — it appears that while Trump was in the White House, when he supposedly wasn’t taking his Presidential pay, he was raking in $Millions from overseas.
More via Rawstory.
In the preface of the report, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote: "It is true that $7.8 million is almost certainly only a fraction of Trump’s harvest of unlawful foreign state money, but this figure in itself is a scandal and a decisive spur to action." USA Today reports that the information came from information handed over to Congress by Mazars USA, Trump’s former accounting firm in 2019.
For the record, the source of these figures is 2 years of data from only 4 of Trump's 500+ properties provided by Trump’s former financial services firm Mazars who quit working with him in 2023 and stated that they could not verify any of the information provided to them by the Trump Org.
I’ve written about this before and frankly, this is merely the tip of a very giant iceberg. Based on a report from CREW based on leaked copies of Trump’s tax returns he appears to have made $160 Million from foreign sources while he was in the White House.
Donald Trump made up to $160 million from international business dealings while he was serving as president of the United States, according to an analysis of his tax returns by CREW.
Throughout his time in office, President Trump, his family and his Republican allies repeatedly assured the public that his refusal to divest from his businesses wouldn’t lead to any conflicts of interest. Americans were promised that Trump would donate his salary, which he did, until maybe he didn’t—all while siphoning millions from taxpayers that more than offset his presidential pay. When it came to foreign conflicts of interest, Trump and his company pledged to pause foreign business. They did not.
Trump pulled in the most money from the United Kingdom, where his Aberdeen and Turnberry golf courses in Scotland helped him gross $58 million. Trump’s now-defunct hotel and tower in Vancouver helped him pull in $36.5 million from Canada. Trump brought in more than $24.4 million from Ireland, home to his often-visited Doonbeg golf course, as well as $9.6 million from India, and nearly $9.7 million from Indonesia.
And that doesn’t cover what he earned from the Saudis both before he was in the White House and during.
The full extent to which Trump’s foreign business ties influenced his decision making as president may never be known, but there is plenty of evidence that Trump’s actions in the White House were influenced–if not guided–by his financial interests, subverting the national interests for his own parochial concerns. For example, while campaigning in 2015, Trump bragged to a crowd in Alabama about his longstanding business ties with the Saudis. “They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million,” he told the crowd. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” In office, Trump continued to benefit from Saudi business and faced repeated criticism, especially in the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, for his apparent desire to shield Saudi leaders from criticism, going so far as to question US intelligence while parroting allegations from Saudi Arabia that Khashoggi was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Or what he earned from Turkey and Syria
Other instances of Trump’s business interests bleeding into his administration’s foreign policy abound. In 2019, Trump stunned the US foreign policy establishment by pulling US troops out of northeast Syria. The decision had no obvious benefits to the US and was a bombshell reversal to allied Kurds, but it was a victory for Turkey, where Trump had done business for years.
And what he earned from China.
In China, Trump again shocked even his GOP allies when he pledged to help sanctioned Chinese company ZTE because, as he tweeted, there were “[t]oo many jobs in China lost,” despite warnings from US intelligence officials that the company’s products may be used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans. When Trump’s tax returns were released more than four years later, they showed a Chinese bank account he claimed to have closed in 2015 and, according to CREW’s analysis, more than $7.5 million in income from China.
But is James Comer going to investigate any of this, let alone investigate the $640 Million that Jared and Ivanka made while working in the White House? [Not to mention the bogus blockade of Qatar and the $2 Billion Kushner received from the Saudis after giving them classified data which MbS used to kidnap, torture and extort members of the royal family for $Billions, then killed Jamal Kashoggi when he was reportedly about to do a column on that situation.]
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working in the White House, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by CREW. It is impossible to tell the exact amount as the income is sometimes reported in broad ranges and cover four months of income before Ivanka Trump officially joined her father’s administration and nearly one month before Jared Kushner joined.
Both Kushner and Trump announced they would not take a salary while working for the government in an attempt to shut down nepotism concerns. While their supporters marked this as a public sacrifice, the massive amount of money they made on the side undercuts that argument, as government salaries would have been less than 1% of their income.
One major factor in their outside profits came from Ivanka Trump’s ownership stake in the Trump Hotel in DC, just blocks from the White House and the locus of influence peddling in the Trump administration. Before business slowed down due to the pandemic, the couple paid a combined 23 visits to the hotel. All told, Ivanka made more than $13 million from the hotel since 2017, dropping from about $4 million a year between 2017 and 2019 to about $1.5 million last year, at least in part due to the pandemic. On top of the drop in revenue, there’s an unexplained drop in the value of her ownership. Having previously claimed it to be worth between $5 million and $25 million, in her final disclosure she listed it as only worth $100,000 to $250,000. She did not report selling any of her ownership share in the hotel.
Or the fact that Ivanka was granted 18 Trademarks in China on a “Fast Track” and Trump’s own financial disclosures reveal that he owns 114 Trademarks in China.
Donald Trump's financial disclosures neglected to include hundreds of trademarks he owns — including over 100 in China and six in Russia — until after he left the office of the presidency.
The hundreds of trademarks include the rights for business opportunities expected for someone with Trump's business record, like real estate, golf, beauty pageant, and hotel branding in dozens of countries.
The list also includes more unexpected business opportunities for the former president, like video games, lash extensions, deodorant, and nautical instruments.
If your bet is “NOPE” — I think you’d have a winner.
Update: Eric Trump says that all the foreign money they received was “donated” to the government.
Eric Trump is denying the new report from Democrats in Congress accusing his family of raking in millions from foreign nations while his father was in office by saying he gave money to the government.
After the House Oversight Committee Democrats released a nearly 200-page report on Thursday about the Trump Organization's profits from foreign countries, the former President Donald Trump's son proclaimed they donated every dime to the U.S. Treasury.
“What a joke!" Eric Trump wrote on social media. "All foreign government profits, for stays at our hotels and other properties while my father was in office, were voluntaraly (sic) donated to the United States Treasury."
He then attacked the segment about the report on MSNBC and said that the real corrupt family is "The Biden's (sic)."
Just before taking office, President Donald Trump promised to donate all profits earned from foreign governments back to the U.S. Treasury.
But MSNBC has learned the Trump Organization is not tracking all possible payments it receives from foreign governments, according to new admissions by Trump representatives. By failing to track foreign payments it receives, the company will be hard-pressed to meet Trump’s pledge to donate foreign profits and could even increase its legal exposure.
Read the Trump Organization foreign profits pamphlet here
The Trump Organization does not "attempt to identify individual travelers who have not specifically identified themselves as being a representative of a foreign government entity," according to a new company pamphlet. The policy suggests that it is up to foreign governments, not Trump hotels, to determine whether they self-report their business.
That policy matches what several sources told MSNBC — Trump Organization employees are not soliciting information about whether reservations or business is from a foreign government.
So if that is the case, how does Eric Trump know that the money they weren't tracking was donated to the government?
In the report they did state that they intended to do these donations, it’s just — how exactly did they do them if they don’t know which clients they came from and how much they spent?
Back in January, Trump and his team said they did not believe renting a hotel room constituted a violation. Still, Trump pledged to track and donate all profits at his companies from foreign government travel and commerce.
Sheri Dillon, an attorney for the Trump Organization, said during a news conference the president-elect had directed that hotel profits from foreign governments would be donated to the U.S. Treasury because "he wants to do more than what the Constitution requires."
"President-elect Trump has decided, and we are announcing today, that he is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments to his hotels to the United States Treasury," she said.
But then it also said.
"To attempt to individually track and distinctly attribute certain business-related costs as specifically identifiable to a particular customer group is not practical," the pamphlet states.
[...]
A Trump representative said that "the pertinent accounting rules" are well understood in the hospitality industry. But experts told MSNBC that there is no standard accounting system to track profits from foreign dignitaries.
[...]
"What is the proof that they are or are not a foreign dignitary?" asked Toni Repetti, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Harrah College of Hotel Administration. "How do you know? There’s no universal list."
So Eric is touting the company line here, but did any of this actually happen?
We’re supposed to trust the accounting practices of a company that makes up and inflates the values of their properties on the fly to qualify for loans and then downgrades them when they’re being assessed for taxes?
I’m guessing the answer to that is “Fat chance.”
Oh, but lookee what else I found? Open Secrets says that Trump Financial Disclosures indicates that he made over $200 Million from Foreign sources.
Trump earned more than $200 million in income from his interests in foreign countries since 2016 and reported nearly $95 million of that income from foreign business dealings in his two most recent financial disclosures on file with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, according to OpenSecrets analysis of data from personal financial disclosures.
Trump’s financial disclosures, filed as recently as July 2020, show Trump reported earning over $47 million from foreign business interests in 2019. The president continued to hold at least $73 million and up to $150 million in foreign assets through a revocable trust at the end of 2019, evidence suggesting Trump has continued to profit from foreign business interests to an even greater extent than the New York Times’ review of Trump’s tax returns exposed.
The New York Times’ reporting shed new light on Trump’s taxes and business dealings during his time at the White House, revealing an unprecedented level of foreign business entanglements for a sitting U.S. president. Trump reportedly earned at least $73 million in 2017 and 2018 from his properties abroad, according to the review of Trump’s tax returns. But Trump’s refusal to release his actual tax returns leaves gaps in disclosure, and financial disclosures analyzed by OpenSecrets reveal that Trump continued to profit from foreign business interests even more than the Times reporting shows.
And, since we have Trump’s finanicial disclosures here — can we confirm Eric Trump’s claim? Did they or did they not include these donations for foreign-derived income in those disclosures?
Well, they did — but it’s not like Eric says.
Trump-branded properties charged the federal government at least $1.1 million since Trump took office with even more flowing in from foreign government officials and special interests. But Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes each year during his first two years in office. While the Trump Organization pledged to contribute all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, it reported giving just $105,000 last year. But Trump is paying hefty taxes to foreign governments: he and his companies reportedly paid $145,400 in taxes to India and $156,824 to the Philippines.
Here are some more specifics about those donations from the WaPo.
President Trump’s company said it donated $105,465 to the U.S. Treasury last month, an amount that it said reflects its profits from foreign-government bookings at its hotels last year.
The number is down sharply from its 2019 donation of about $191,000, showing a drop in spending by foreign governments at Trump hotels. This is the third year that the company, which Trump still owns, has made such a donation, part of an effort to avoid violating the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars a president from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments
Trump’s son Eric Trump, who is running the company with his brother Donald Trump Jr., announced the donation last month on social media.
“While not legally required, for the third year in a row, we are honored to fulfill my father’s generous pledge to donate profits from foreign government patronage at our properties, back to the United States Government,” he wrote.
The Trump Organization does not disclose the foreign clients that booked business at the company’s hotels but says it does not seek that business and tries to avoid it because the company donates the profits. The company donated $191,538 last year, reflecting 2018 profits, and $151,470 the year prior, reflecting 2017 profits.
So according to the records from 2017-2019 the Trump organization donated a total of $448,473 to the government to offset spending by foreign clients in their hotels — while apparently taking in $7.8 Million from foreign clients and another $200 Million from his properties in foreign countries.
Me thinks Eric speaks with forked tongue.
Jamie Raskin appeared last night on CNN to address this issue.
Speaking with CNN host John Berman, Raskin highlighted findings in the report that he co-authored with Democratic colleagues on the House Oversight Committee before being asked about Eric Trump's pushback.
With the report stating, "The presidency became the fulfillment of a get-rich-quick campaign he [Trump] reportedly described as 'the greatest infomercial in political history,'" Eric Trump fired back by excitedly claiming, "What a joke! All foreign government profits, for stays at our hotels and other properties while my father was in office, were voluntarily donated to the United States Treasury."
"Your response to Eric?" host Berman prompted.
"Yes, I love that excuse because he's saying, 'Well, trust us. We will go through all the numbers,' and they put in, I think, half a million dollars which kind of gives the game away."
"They know they're taking millions of dollars in unlawful, unconstitutional foreign government payments, but he says, 'Trust us, we will do our own accounting. We are not going to show it to you, but we will give some money back,'" he continued.
"The Constitution doesn't say that you can't keep profits from foreign governments, the Constitution says you can't keep any payments at all without going to Congress to have it accepted."
"We are talking about an unbroken line of presidents accepting that and always coming to Congress to say we received some trinkets, we've received a statue, we've received a painting, whatever it is, and then it's up to Congress to decide what to do with it," he elaborated.
"Only Donald Trump has arrogated to himself the decision of whether or not he can keep the money and then he will deign to give us back what he calls the profits."
"It's an outrage, it's absurd and he has to give the entire $7.8 million back to the American people," he bluntly stated.
