Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Sunday accused former President Trump of trying to convert the White House into a “moneymaking enterprise” in response to House Democrats finding Trump took nearly $8 million from foreign governments while president.
“So Donald Trump did something nobody had ever done before. He tried to convert the presidency into a moneymaking enterprise,” he said on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”
Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said he has not yet gotten a response from Trump or his legal team, after sending the former president a letter on Friday demanding that he return the roughly $7.8 million he received from foreign governments while president.
Raskin’s letter comes after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published a report claiming Trump’s companies accepted money from foreign entities in 20 countries and said those payments violate the Emolument Clause of the Constitution.
Of the total amount, about $5.6 million came from China and went to Trump’s hotels in Washington and Las Vegas, the report alleges, as well as Trump Tower in New York.
Raskin has stressed that the $7.8 million figure is only a fraction of what he claims the former President most likely received while in office. Raskin has accused the committee’s chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), of stifling the investigation when he took the top spot.
“The Constitution says that the president or any other federal official cannot accept a present and emolument, which means a payment, in office or title of any kind, whatever, that’s in the Constitution, from a king, a prince, a foreign government without the consent of Congress,” Raskin said on Sunday. “Donald Trump came to Congress zero times to asked to keep this money.”
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Rep. Jamie Raskin says Donald Trump tried to convert presidency into "moneymaking enterprise" https://t.co/lhBFLSu1sh pic.twitter.com/j58IRoYRfD
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