MAP: President Trump is being sued over these business interests
Ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump claiming he is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The suit alleges payments by foreign governments or foreign state-owned companies to Trump’s businesses — to lease office space or rent a hotel room, for example — infringes upon the emoluments clause.
The previously-obscure provision forbids the president from accepting gifts from foreign states without the approval of Congress.
According to the lawsuit, the president has potential conflicts of interest in the United States and 10 foreign countries, including China, Turkey, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The map below outlines the location of each potential conflict.
Trump has dismissed the charges as “totally without merit.” The president resigned from his company this week, leaving its management to a trust run by his sons, Don and Eric, and the CFO of The Trump Organization. President Trump still owns the businesses.
Ethics officials have criticized this arrangement, claiming they do not meet the standard set by Trump’s predecessors. Most presidents since Lyndon B. Johnson have divested from their assets and placed them in a blind trust to which they have no access.
One major hurdle for the lawsuit, according to BuzzFeed, is establishing “whether CREW has standing to bring the lawsuit. Standing is a requirement that a plaintiff in a lawsuit have sufficient, individualized injury that results from the alleged action or inaction.”
If they do pass that hurdle, Slate points out that it might not matter, and “the courts may decide that they have no business passing judgment on the president’s conflicts of interest, maintaining that they involve an inherently political question that courts are ill-suited to decide.”
Trump for his part has denied it’s even possible for him to violate the clause, telling the New York Times, “the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”
