Jamie Raskin tangles with Byron Donalds on Trump hotels, emoluments clause

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sparred with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) at a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday over former President Trump’s hotels and the emoluments clause of the Constitution, after Democrats found that the former president received millions from foreign entities while in in the White House.

“There is no hotel exception, Mr. Donalds, to the foreign emoluments clause,” Raskin said. “There is no international real estate syndicate exception to the foreign emoluments clause, Mr. Donalds.”

Oversight Committee Democrats released a report last week that found Trump took at least $7.8 million from foreign entities in 20 countries in payments to his businesses, which they say could violate a constitutional prohibition on accepting funding from foreign governments.

A majority of the payments, about $5.6 million, came from China and went to Trump’s hotels in Washington and Las Vegas, as well as Trump Tower in New York, the report found.

The lawmakers got into a back-and-forth over specifics of the report, as Democrats tangled with Republicans in the hearing focused on Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. Democrats claimed Republicans care about the president’s son’s foreign business dealings, but turn a blind eye to Trump’s.

Raskin said he would take Donalds up on his challenge to see if the Trump hotels “actually had the same level of business coming from Saudi Arabia,” China, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, India and Egypt.

Speaking to Donalds, who was heading out of the hearing, the Maryland Democrat said he would “make that comparison” about Trump’s more than 500 businesses, if Donalds could “get the chairman to call off the ban on further documents.”

In an interview Friday, Raskin cautioned that the total number is likely larger than what was found in the report because it only covered two of Trump’s four years in office, was related to only four of Trump’s more than 500 businesses and was only able to examine 20 countries.

Donalds fired back at Raskin, asking if he had “ever stayed at a Trump hotel before.”

“No, and I never would stay at a Trump hotel,” Raskin responded. “I’ve got too much self-respect and concern for hygiene.”

The Hill has reached out to the Oversight Committee, Raskin and Donalds’s offices for further comment on the confrontation.

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