An opinion piece published on Sunday in the New York Times takes stock of President Trump’s dealings since returning to the White House in January, arguing that his overt use of the office for personal gain has not been met with a commensurate response from political opposition. The observation comes just days after Trump hosted a dinner at one of his golf clubs with investors in his crypto venture (from which he is estimated to have earned roughly $320 million in fees), but that event does not begin to cover the breadth of the Trump family’s business dealings.
Four days ago, the Defense Department formally accepted a luxury Boeing 747 valued at over $400 million to be used as Air Force One for the rest of Trump’s term, which would go to his presidential library when he leaves office. Essentially that means at that point he would use it as a personal plane. Meanwhile, Eric Trump, who runs the family’s core real estate business, is signing deals worth billions to develop property across the Arabian peninsula, with a hotel in Dubai, a residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a golf course with villas in Qatar. The president’s wife is also in on the act, with her own crypto meme coin and a contract worth millions for a documentary being produced by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.
To be sure, the Trump family found ways to profit from his office during his first term as well, billing the US government and visiting foreign officials for stays in his hotels and the like, but the depth of his current efforts is apparently without equal. A professor specializing in studies of US government corruption told the Times his “head is still spinning” at the current state of affairs, calling Trump’s graft an “absolute outlier case.” An advocate for government ethics agreed: “there’s nothing in the history of America that approaches the use of the presidency for massive personal gain. Nothing.”
Most concerning is the lack of major pushback on the matter, as several issues have allowed Trump to engage in these blatant conflicts of interest more or less unimpeded. There is the oft-cited Emoluments Clause that potentially could be used against him, a law dating back to the country’s founding that forbids federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign powers without Congressional approval, and includes a domestic provision targeting the presidency specifically, that prevents them from accepting any emoluments other than their salary.
Trump was indeed sued by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C. over the hotel rooms used by foreign officials in his first term, which went to the Supreme Court after mixed rulings, but the case was ultimately deemed moot after Trump left office in 2021. Numerous questions were unfortunately left unresolved, including something as fundamental as whether the AGs had standing to bring the case in the first place. Legal actions using the Emoluments clause are so rare that there was not much precedent framing the cases as they were brought.
Other obstacles abound in his second term. One issue is the sheer multitude of apparently corrupt actions occurring at the same time. Former advisor Steve Bannon talked about “flooding the zone” with so many drastic changes to policy and governance that the opposition is unable to keep up, and it would seem that a similar strategy is being employed to get around that opposition when it comes to dodgy dealings. Another problem is the president’s summary firing of over a dozen inspectors general across a plethora of federal agencies, who might have caught something and blown the whistle by now.
Despite the negative coverage he’s getting from the media for his maneuvers, the lawsuits against his administration over executive orders and policy, and even sharp critiques from other elected officials–like Senator Chris Murphy– no new Emoluments Clause actions have been brought and none appear on the horizon as the grab continues.
In Vietnam, where the government is currently trying to renegotiate a bilateral trade deal with the United States, he has another $1.5 billion resort project being fast-tracked by local authorities, who have skipped environmental reviews and shortened public comment periods from angry locals. “Trump says it’s separate — the presidency and his business,” a resident of the area told the New York Times. “But he has the power to do whatever he wants.” Using power to bend others to your will amounts to coercion, but no one is objecting.
