Heather Digby Parton has investigated and found another side of the constitutional violations inherent with a Trump presidency. The media has focused primarily on the foreign aspect of the emoluments clause, but the domestic violations, not so much.
Here is a small part of Digby’s report | December 21, 2016:
I would guess that most Americans had never heard of the “foreign emoluments clause” of Article I of the United States Constitution until the last month. We’ve certainly heard a lot about it since. It is a constitutional prohibition against presidents receiving compensation, gifts or other forms of profit or gain from foreign governments. [...]
It remains a mystery as to why, with some notable exceptions, the campaign press largely ignored the the issue of what Trump planned to do about his privately held business if he were elected. His unprecedented refusal to release any tax returns was an obvious sign that he was hiding something
Digby turns to law professor Laurence H. Tribe on the foreign conflicts of interest first:
Legal scholars are scandalized. It is true that the conflict of interest laws that apply to others in government don’t apply to the president. But the Constitution’s two emoluments clauses apply directly to him and him alone. Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, wrote this in The Guardian about the foreign emoluments issue:
Trump’s continued interest in the Trump Organization and his steady stream of monetary and other benefits from foreign powers put him on a collision course with the emoluments clause. Disentangling every improper influence resulting from special treatment of Trump’s business holdings by foreign states would be impossible. The American people would be condemned to uncertainty, leaving our political discourse rife with accusations of corruption. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that Trump has regularly declined to make his business dealings or tax returns transparent. Thus a specter of skewed incentives will haunt a Donald Trump presidency.
Tribe says that if Trump refuses to “cure his continuing violation of the emoluments clause” the Congress has the power and the duty to impeach him.
Then the less talked about conflicts of interest, the domestic violations of the emoluments clause of the constitution:
Brianne J. Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, addressed the lesser known but equally applicable domestic emoluments clause of Article II of the constitution in an article for The Huffington Post. She explained that this clause was designed to prevent the president from receiving, beyond his salary, “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them” meaning that the Congress or the individual states could not offer the president side deals or other financial inducements.
How this compromises Trump is obvious. His company owns properties and businesses all over the United States as well as around the world. Gorod laid out a few of Trump’s possible conflicts that appear to violate Article II:
• Perhaps most significantly, with hotels and property developments all over the United States (the beneficiary of tax breaks from any number of states. As [The New York] Times has reported, since 1980, Trump “has reaped at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for luxury apartments, hotels and office buildings in New York.”)
• Trump plans to maintain a financial stake in the reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice.
• openly selling access to themselves and the president-elect.
And those are just a few conflicts off the top
Digby included these important statements made by Laurence H. Tribe:
Tribe wrote in his piece for The Guardian that “while much has changed since the constitution was written, certain premises of politics and human nature have held steady, among them is that private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders.” Trump is anything but a virtuous leader.
The emoluments clauses could have been written specifically with him in mind.
And again this determination by Laurence H. Tribe:
Tribe says that if Trump refuses to “cure his continuing violation of the emoluments clause” the Congress has the power and the duty to impeach him.
The language is completely unambiguous and very clear to me; a blue collar worker with no legal training whatsoever. What the constitution has spelled out and what the experts have made clear is this:
“Congress has the power and the duty to impeach” Donald Trump if he doesn’t follow the constitution.
— not just the power to impeach, but the duty.
# # #
I can’t count the times that the “conservative” party and their mouthpieces in the media over the last eight years, has hammered our current president; accusing President Obama of violating the constitution, smearing him with words like “overreaching” and “abusing his executive powers”, so I won’t bother rehashing that eight year smear campaign where the racist birtherism assault was merely the plinth beneath the mountain of bullshit they erected
Without full & complete divestiture of all assets, holdings and business activities now and in the future, Donald Trump can not legally and without violating the United States Constitution, become President. With all that in mind...
If the republicans in the US house of congress do not impeach, and the republicans in the US senate don’t convict Donald Trump for the numerous constitutional violations that I am 99.9% positive will be “normalized” by these same politicians— then the GOP truly is a crime syndicate in every sense that matters — imo — in control of all three branches of government. That is how low down the GOP has driven this country