Documents released by the House Democrats on January 4, 2024 and reported by the New York Times last week “revealed” that during his first two years as president, Donald Trump’s “businesses received at least 7.8 million from 20 foreign governments” in overseas transactions with most of it coming from China.
This reporting was not only old news, but it barely scratched the surface of what we already knew about Trump’s monetization of the White House for the benefit of the Trump Organization as well as family members, thanks at least in part to the investigative work of the Times, the Washington Post, the nonprofit government accountability group CREW, and the authors of The Grifter’s Club.
In any case, the indicated number of dollars, as the saying goes, accounts for only the tip of the corrupt iceberg of Trump’s grafting operation during his one term in office. In other words, those particular financial violations of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Domestic Emoluments Clause by Trump and his numerous businesses were not really central to the enterprise’s overall syndication of revenue generation. The real “cash cow” was mostly about pay-to-play and those monies came from overlapping domestic and international sources.
Though Trump campaigned in 2016 to end the Washington insider culture of lobbying and favor-seeking, he actually “reinvented it,” as the Times reported shortly after he left office, “turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign.” The line between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration was so thin that it is still unclear where the former president’s public responsibilities ended and his private financial interests began.
“Unlike any other modern president, Trump has forced the American people to ask if the decisions and policies his administration is implementing are because they’re the best policies for the nation, or because they personally benefit him – either helping his businesses directly or by special interests spending money there” the Times wrote.
What is crystal clear is that the Corrupter-in-Chief, in terms of personal benefits, was able to monetize or convert the office of the presidency into one of his most successful grifts for himself and family members, including son-in-law Jared Kushner who was the recipient of more than $2 billion to his fledgling firm from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince.
Following his election to the White House, Trump pledged to recuse himself from running the operation of the Trump Organization but he did not do so. In The Swamp That Trump Built, the New York Times found that over 200 companies and special-interest groups and foreign governments obtained benefits from patronizing and spending monies at his various properties.
Among Trump’s fringe benefits was the granting of 67 foreign trademarks to his businesses, including 46 from China. With political interests at stake, sixty of those business customers found them advanced by bringing nearly $12 million into the Trump family businesses during the first half of his presidency.
The diversity of the patrons showing up at the Trump bazaar spanned the global spectrum and competing special interests were busy trumping one another there. Either way Trump and the family holdings made out like bandits as they doled out funding, laws, and land. Some of those winners and losers included, according to the Times, “foreign politicians and Florida sugar barons, a Chinese billionaire and a Serbian prince, clean-energy enthusiasts and their adversaries in the petroleum industry, avowed small-government activists and contractors seeking billions from ever-fattening federal budgets.”
By September 2020, the missing firewall between his businesses and the presidency had revealed 3,403 conflicts of interest or about two conflicts per day. These conflicts included foreign government officials conducting business or staying at Trump properties as well as other taxpayer and campaign spending at Trump businesses. They also involved Trump and family members or other politicos promoting an array of monetizing scams or rackets to raise capital.
After 1,341 days in office: 88 political events had been held at Trump properties, including 13 foreign government events; 130 special interest groups events; 145 foreign officials and 141 members of Congress had visited a Trump business for a total of 344 times. Most of these visits (284) were to the Trump Hotel in D.C.
Topping the list of pay-to-play was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, with 27 visits, followed by Sen. Rand Paul (18) and Reps. Matt Gaetz (17), Kevin McCarthy (17), Jim Jordan (13), and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (13).
Not insignificant were the top 10 political committees spending money at Trump properties as well:
- Trump Victory, $2,282,630
- Republican National Committee, $2,425,472
- Donald J. Trump for President, $2,307,127
- America First Action, $600,322
- Republican Governors Association, $412,721
- Great America Committee, $237,967
- Protect the House, $232,837
- Senate Leadership Fund, $94,626
- Republican Attorneys General Association, $85,205
- National Republican Congressional Committee, $81,367
During this period Trump paid 503 visits to Trump businesses mostly to his golf courses (303), costing the American taxpayers at least one million dollars spent at the properties as well as more than $100 million to shuttle him to his properties. In addition to Trump, some 334 administration officials visited his properties for a total of 885 times.
First family members and senior advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump respectively visited Trump properties “more than any other executive branch officials with 39 and 36 visits.” Following them were runner-ups Vice President Pence with 33 visits, former Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway with 27 visits, and Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin with 23. Other visitors worthy of “dishonorable” mention were Wilbur Ross (19), Dan Scavino (19), Mick Mulvaney (18), Richard Grenell (17), and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (17).
All total, 145 foreign officials from 75 governments had visited Trump properties with officials from Turkey leading the pack. At Trump’s vaunted “Winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago, the former president had hosted Chinese President Xi Jingping, the then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and lastly the former President of Brazil and failed insurrectionist Jair Bolsonaro. The Xi visit was the most successful promotional event in the history of Mar-a-Lago and an unparalleled moneymaker for Trump.
Lastly, in his inimical and corrupt way Trump had turned his pardoning power into another revenue generating stream for making money off the presidency, with opening bids for a pardon or clemency consideration starting at $50,000 with no guarantees of success. We learned more recently that according to court documents filed in a civil complaint last May 2023, a former aide to former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani says that Rudy had told her in 2019 that he and the president were “offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million apiece,” and that they were splitting the money. Imagine what a second Trump term could sell off.
