PRESS RELEASE Contact: press@congressionalintegrity.org
For Immediate Release
Date: January 4, 2024
Washington, D.C. – Today, the Minority on the House Oversight Committee, led by Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, released a bombshell new report titled White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump. The report details how then-President Donald Trump received “at least $7.8 million from foreign entities while in office”, including $5.5 million from U.S. adversary China – the exact allegations that House Republicans have desperately tried to pin on President Biden without a single shred of evidence.
In response, Congressional Integrity Project executive director, Kyle Herrig, issued the following statement:
“Today’s report by the Oversight Committee Democrats shows the real leader of any White House Crime Family: disgraced former president Donald Trump. And unlike House Republicans like James Comer, Raskin and the committee minority have backed up their allegations with facts and evidence. House Republicans wasted all of 2023 investigating President Biden for the same allegations of foreign entanglements, and have failed to turn up a single shred of evidence of wrongdoing. It’s clear they spent 2023 investigating the wrong president.”
Key Takeaways:
Donald Trump Received At Least $7.8 Million From 20 Foreign Governments Through Business Interests While Serving As President. “President Trump’s businesses received, at a minimum, $7.8 million in foreign payments from at least 20 countries during his presidency. These included payments from foreign governments and foreign government-owned or -controlled entities to properties owned by Donald Trump, including Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas; Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; and Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York.” [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
Donald Trump Took Millions From Authoritarian Regimes Ranging From China To Saudi Arabia.“The foreign nations making payments to President Trump spanned the globe and included several of the most corrupt and authoritarian governments on Earth. They ranged from the People’s Republic of China to Saudi Arabia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Malaysia…These countries spent—often lavishly—on apartments and hotel stays at Donald Trump’s properties—personally enriching President Trump while he made foreign policy decisions connected to their policy agendas with far-reaching ramifications for the United States.” [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
China Funneled $5.5 Million To Donald Trump Through His Business Interests — The Largest Total Payment of Any Foreign Government. “Information available to the Committee shows that among countries patronizing Trump properties, China made the largest total payment to President Trump’s private business interests. […] Among the countries patronizing Mr. Trump’s properties, China made the largest total payment — $5.5 million — to his business interests, the report found. Those payments included millions of dollars from China’s Embassy in the United States, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Hainan Airlines Holding Company.” [The New York Times, 1/4/24]
Donald Trump Repeatedly Placed His Personal Financial Interests Above The Public Interest:
- Trump Refused To Impose Sanctions On A Chinese Bank Doing Business in Trump Tower. “In 2017, President Trump did not impose sanctions on ICBC—his well-paying tenant in Trump Tower in New York—even though the DOJ in 2016 filed a complaint alleging that the bank had been among Chinese financial institutions that had provided accounts to a company that had allegedly conspired with a North Korean bank to evade U.S. sanctions. He did not sanction ICBC even after former Republican Chairman Ed Royce of the House Foreign Affairs Committee called on President Trump to ‘apply maximum financial and diplomatic pressure’ by ‘targeting more Chinese banks that do business with North Korea.’” [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
- Trump Signed An Arms Deal With Saudi Officials While They Spent Lavishly At His Properties. “In May 2017, while Saudi Arabia was spending lavishly at properties he owned, President Trump signed an arms deal with the Saudi government worth more than $100 billion, despite reports that the country repeatedly used weapons to cause mass civilian casualties during its ongoing military intervention in Yemen.” [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
- Trump Undercut His Own Administration’s Foreign Policy While the U.A.E. Spent Tens of Thousands At Trump’s Hotel. As the Oversight report notes, “Over a seven-month period in 2017 and 2018, while the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) lobbied Trump Administration officials to support a blockade of Qatar that Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. had imposed, the U.A.E. spent tens of thousands of dollars at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., through four different stays.” During this period, Trump reversed years of foreign policy by praising Saudi Arabia’s decision to sever ties with Qatar. [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
While Receiving Millions In Foreign Payments, Donald Trump Bragged About Self-Enrichment. “The presidency became the fulfillment of a get-rich-quick campaign he reportedly described as ‘the greatest infomercial in political history.’” [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
Defying the U.S. Constitution, Donald Trump Never Sought Consent From Congress To Accept Payments From Foreign Powers. “Through entities he owned and controlled, President Trump accepted, at a minimum, millions of dollars in foreign emoluments in violation of the United States Constitution. The documents obtained from former President Trump’s accounting firm and from a federal agency demonstrate that four Trump owned properties together collected, at the least, millions of dollars in payments from foreign governments and officials that violated the Constitution’s prohibition on emoluments ‘of any kind whatever’ from foreign governments. These payments clearly fell within the definitions of emoluments set forth in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution and applied by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the federal judiciary, which include payments that flow from transactional relationships with foreign governments or entities, including so-called ‘market’ transactions. […] Yet Donald Trump, while holding the office of president, used his business entities to pocket millions of dollars from foreign states and royalty and never once went to Congress to seek its consent.” [Committee on Oversight and Accountability Democratic Staff, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premier Paid Off President Trump’, 1/4/24]
Read the full report by the House Oversight Democrats here.
