Trump Empire Claims Tracking Payments Too Hard, Watchdogs Say Too Bad

Despite promising to donate whatever profits President Donald Trump makes from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, it has been revealed that the president’s real estate empire is actually not tracking those payments, which ethics watchdogs warn puts him in clear violation of the Constitution.

In fact, a pamphlet (pdf) created by the Trump Organization on foreign government patronage and shared with news outlets and Congressional lawmakers says it is “impractical” to “pu[t] forth a policy that requires all guests to identify themselves.”

“To attempt to individually track and distinctly attribute certain business-related costs as specifically identifiable to a particular customer group is not practical,” it states, “nor would it even be possible without an inordinate amount of time, resources and specialists, which would still be subject to some measure of estimation and cost allocation methodology.”

“If President Trump believes that identifying all the prohibited foreign emoluments he is currently receiving would be too challenging or would harm his business ventures, his options are to divest his ownership or submit a proposal to Congress to ask for our consent.”
—Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)

Rather, the document details how “the Trump Organization will rely on estimates and assumptions about payments from foreign powers at its properties. It will use those figures—in unclear ways—to calculate total profits from foreign governments. And from time to time, it will write a check for this amount to the U.S. Treasury,” as Joshua Matz, attorney and publisher of the Trump watchdog website Take Care, put it.

The pamphlet was sent to the heads of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in response to a bipartisan request last month for information “about the implementation and timing” of Trump’s highly-publicized plan to donate his contentious hotel profits.

Blasting the “glossy, eight-page pamphlet that contains a total of 40 sentences” as a “meager response” to the request, ranking committee member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent a letter (pdf) to the Trump Organization on Wednesday declaring the president’s plan Constitutionally problematic.

“Complying with the U.S. Constitution is not an optional exercise, but a requirement for serving as our nation’s President,” Cummings wrote. “If President Trump believes that identifying all the prohibited foreign emoluments he is currently receiving would be too challenging or would harm his business ventures, his options are to divest his ownership or submit a proposal to Congress to ask for our consent.”

Cummings also demanded that the Trump Organization “comply fully with the [initial] request for documents” and submit to a committee briefing “on or before June 2.”