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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Supreme Court on Monday put an end to lawsuits alleging that former president Donald Trump violated a constitutional anti-corruption prohibition by profiting from his business empire while president.
The justices, without comment or noted dissent, declined to hear Trump’s request to consider lower court orders that said lawsuits could go forward, agreeing with those on both sides of the issue that the cases became moot with Trump no longer in office.
The justices also vacated the lower court judgments in the cases, one of which was filed by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
It means that there is no definitive answer after years of legal wrangling over the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which prohibit presidents and others from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without congressional approval.
The question has rarely been presented because presidents rarely maintain active business interests in office, as Trump did. Much of the litigation turned on the president’s interest in the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, which became a magnet for foreign dignitaries and others doing business with the government.
The litigation was consumed with questions about who had the right to bring such a suit, and legal questions without precedent.
“We are proud that because of our case, a court ruled on the meaning of ’emoluments’ for the first time in American history, finding that the Constitution prohibits federal officials from accepting almost anything of value from foreign or domestic governments,” District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said in a joint statement.
They added: “History will note that at every step of this case, President Trump and political appointees at the Department of Justice went to extreme lengths to prevent us from uncovering the true extent of his corruption. He attempted to short-circuit the rules of legal procedure to have our case dismissed and avoid discovery into his finances, arguing that the law did not apply to him.”
Their case was one of three testing for the first time the Constitution’s ban on the country’s leaders engaging in private business relationships with foreign governments.
The Supreme Court declined in October to take up a case brought by Democratic members of Congress led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. The lawmakers had appealed a Washington D.C. Circuit ruling that blocked individual members of Congress from trying to enforce the foreign emoluments clause.
In a third case in New York, brought by the not-for-profit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of Trump’s hospitality industry competitors, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said a lower-court judge had improperly thrown out the case in late 2017.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump was illegally profiting from his hotels and restaurants in New York and the District. The full appeals court declined to rehear the case this summer and Trump asked the high court to intervene.
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One place where no one seems to have connected the dots between Trump and an unofficial business revenue stream is Mar-a-Lago, where memberships went for $200,000 each. Perhaps the Congress might be interested in a review of the membership list, especially those who joined after the 2016 election, to see if any lobbyists signed-up and paid the price for quick and easy access to Trump? As they saw, “follow the money.”
These lawsuits were nothing but a waste of time and money
It is disappointing to see that the court ruled in such a way. They seemed to have stripped the power from congress to provide oversight of the executive branch, and specifically the President. In a way it is now moot for this President, but the message is clear, the next corrupt President only has to make sure the Justice department strings along any challenges from Congress until they are out of office, and then the challenges all disappear.
I know this is a year after the first impeachment, but Democrats were strongly criticized for “rushing impeachment charges to the Senate with little or no investigation” without first exhausting all legal challenges. This is a very clear indication of where any legal challenges would have gone has Congress chosen to pursue that fruitless tactic.
whats most frustrating is that any other individual would still be held accountable and forced to return any money or benefits. It’s ridiculous they choose to not hear the case as he’s no longer in power. seems like two different standards of justice….