The Founding Fathers, having recently helped throw off the yoke of British colonial rule, were understandably concerned about foreign governments meddling in domestic affairs, which is why they wrote guardrails into the Constitution to stave off corruption and place limits on any future leader, including Donald John Trump, who might lack an intrinsic ethical compass.
The Constitution expressly forbids a president from accepting compensation other than his designated salary from the federal government or any state government. And without the consent of Congress, no federal officeholder can accept “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
You see the problem here. Trump’s financial conflicts of interest constitute a long list, and he has deep and longstanding financial ties to myriad foreign governments, who now have more ways than ever to try and curry favor and influence his administration’s decisions.
“We have a lot of laws that are difficult to enforce when you have a powerful person intent on getting away with everything.”
I broke down five areas of particular concern in a companion piece. And below, edited for length and clarity, it the interview it was based on. Noah Bookbinder became the president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington in May 2015, one month before Trump announced his first presidential bid. He had previously served in various government positions, including as a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s public integrity section, and he oversaw CREW’s 2017 lawsuits against Trump, accusing the president of taking illegal emoluments via foreign government patronage of his hotel in Washington, DC.
CREW’s legal actions, one of them a collaboration with the attorneys general of DC and Maryland, were upheld by appeals courts and on track for success—until Trump ran out the clock, a development Bookbinder deems “deeply frustrating.” His nonprofit is now busy triaging the most urgent priorities, including a lawsuit that challenges the activities of DOGE, Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
If domestic billionaires channel cash into Trump’s business interests to curry favor, that’s not emoluments, but something more like corruption, right?
That’s right. It can be a conflict of interest. It can be corruption. And there’s a separate emoluments clause in the Constitution, which says, essentially, that the president can’t take income from the federal or state governments beyond his salary. So if there are state pension funds contributing to the stock value of Trump Media or states making beneficial decisions for properties, things like that can be emoluments violations.
What’s your big-picture take on Trump’s conflicts of interest now versus then?
During Trump’s first presidency, he received significant payments and benefits. On the foreign side, the research we’ve done, combined with what the House did, suggest that more than $13 million—potentially much, much more—came to his businesses from foreign governments.
We should expect similar things [in Trump’s second term]: money coming into his properties and developments. But 1737724007 there are factors that create the risk of emoluments at a much higher level. This really matters, because it is the potential for foreign governments and other powerful interests to impact decisions that could affect the safety of security and wellbeing of Americans.
One is Trump Media, the parent company for Truth Social. That’s a publicly traded company, and so anyone, whether it’s a wealthy individual or a foreign country, that buys a large number of shares is likely to push the stock value up, which immediately drives up Donald Trump’s net worth—and it could go much further than renting hotel rooms or planning an event at a Trump property. There’s also the threat that those interests could quickly sell off the stock, which would drive prices down and potentially tank Trump’s net worth, which gives them further leverage. So that’s a real risk.
Another one that he was talking about on Inauguration Day is a new crypto entity that he controls a lot of the value of. This “cryptocurrency” is not really a currency. There’s not anything behind it. It’s just a thing people can buy because they think at some point someone else will want to buy it for that much money or more—really sort of a hollow vessel for anyone, including foreign governments, to put money into, which puts money in Trump’s pocket.
I believe Trump has a financial interest in other cryptocurrencies, too, and now he gets to dictate how the Treasury Department regulates them.
That’s another major risk with him. He and his administration could be making major decisions that could really affect his businesses and his income. There’s likely a tremendous need for federal regulation, and if Trump has a lot of value in cryptocurrency, that could certainly affect whether it’s regulated, [such as] by looking out for regular people who are investing and whom we don’t want to get scammed. The same is true with social media companies [and rules] potentially looking out for the wellbeing of kids.
Have there been any legal tests for this stuff? Because there’s a lot of nuance with blockchain transactions that might not be enriching Trump directly.
That is a concern. We had litigation with Trump about emoluments violations during his first presidency, and there were some complicated questions there, and litigation delay is something at which he’s a master. So even though we won at various stages in federal appeals courts, those cases were still going after four years and ended up getting dismissed as moot by the Supreme Court.
There are certainly some new issues, particularly in the crypto and social-media areas, that I don’t think have been litigated in the emoluments context. But ultimately the core issues are pretty simple: He owns these business ventures and foreign governments may be putting money into them, which violates those constitutional provisions.
Are there any aspects of your 2017 cases that could be revived—or would you have to start over?
As a legal matter, it is as though they never existed. And so even those favorable appeals decisions don’t have any precedential value.
That must be terribly frustrating.
Yes. This was a clear violation of provisions intended to protect the public from corruption and from decisions being made in ways that might not be in the people’s interest, and it’s very, very hard, it turns out, to get courts to enforce them—or get anybody to enforce them. That’s deeply frustrating, and one more example of Trump finding ways to be lawless, and to take advantage of the fact that we have a lot of laws that are difficult to enforce when you have a powerful person intent on getting away with everything.
As far as CREW’s plans, we are still examining the facts and the current legal situation. When you had [Trump’s] DC hotel, which was a magnet for people trying to influence the president, it was pretty easy to establish who the competitors were, and who might have standing [to sue, claiming they were harmed by the unfair competition]. It can be a lot more complicated when you have a social media stock. Some of the legal and jurisdictional issues—it was not easy in 2017, but it’s trickier now. So it’s a question of, in a time of potentially greater need and limited resources, what are the most strategic and compelling actions to bring? That’s the calculus now.
And I guess the judicial landscape has changed a fair bit since 2017.
We did pretty well in the appeals courts the last time around. There’s no particular reason to think they would be less open to these kinds of cases. But we’ve seen an alarming trend of the US Supreme Court bending over backwards to accommodate Trump and to avoid holding him accountable for lawless behavior. And that is troubling for any decision about litigation to try to hold him to the laws and to the Constitution. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it.
You also have the Fifth Circuit to contend with.
That is true. There are certainly pockets that are really problematic, and questions about where a case like this could be brought.
If you go after Trump, wouldn’t he just run the clock again? It’s much easier for a president to delay than it is for a regular citizen to do so.
I think that’s right, and that’s a tactic that he used long before he was president. I certainly expect that with any kind of litigation. I hope that, to some extent, courts are maybe getting wise to that and will be a little bit less inclined to go along.
Another newer area of concern is the LIV Golf league. Say more about that.
Yeah. LIV Golf didn’t exist when Donald Trump was president the first time. It’s a league backed, indirectly at least, by the Saudi government, that has held several events at Trump’s properties and is already scheduled to hold one at one of his golf resorts in 2025. That seems like another clear emoluments violation. You’d have to show that the connection to the Saudi government is direct enough, and how the money is going to his companies. But when you take a step back, it’s clear what’s happening: This is a Saudi-backed enterprise bringing business to the president.
We saw in the first Trump term lots of cases where Saudi Arabia appeared to bring business to Trump. There was a time when one of the leading Saudi officials came to New York City, and the government had reserved essentially a floor at one of Trump’s hotels. There were a number of such instances, and this seems to be more of the same, potentially on a larger scale. We also saw Trump making decisions that seemed surprisingly positive toward Saudi Arabia, including essentially looking the other way when Saudi Arabia killed a US-based journalist.
Is CREW concerned about all the goods Trump is hawking—sneakers and watches and fragrances and bibles and guitars? I mean, it’s probably small potatoes for foreign emoluments—though certainly untoward for a president.
It is untoward. And it is problematic to have a president who appears to be, in a very direct way, using the presidency to make extra money. Sometimes the amounts don’t really matter. We saw that during the first Trump presidency, where people and companies who wanted to influence the president would show up at the Trump Hotel in DC and take a picture of themselves having a drink at the bar and put it on Twitter.
There were officials from T-Mobile during its merger with Sprint, which the administration was going to have to clear, that stayed at the Trump Hotel and put that very prominently on social media.
These aren’t [necessarily] big-money purchases, but it’s still a way of signaling that they’re paying respect and they’re hoping that he’ll return the favor. Do we think that the Saudi government is going to buy a Trump Bible? I mean, that doesn’t seem like the most direct way to influence him when you could put millions of dollars into Trump Media stock. But small symbolic steps can also work to gain influence. It’s all part of the same playbook.
Another issue is the business dealings of Trump’s family members. Eric Trump claims the Trump Organization is playing by the rules and that they hired an ethics lawyer to review new contracts over $10 million—which actually seems like a high threshold.
Yes, and to some extent it really doesn’t matter much. As far as we know, Trump is again putting his ownership of the Trump Organization into a trust. But it’s not a blind trust, it’s controlled by his son and the ownership will revert back to him when he’s done as president. He knows what his interests are. He knows that he benefits if Trump Media benefits. He knows he benefits if business comes to his resorts and his properties. And none of these steps do anything to address that.
His first presidency had stronger controls, because there were supposed to be no new foreign ventures. Yet there were constant conflicts of interest with foreign governments and wealthy individuals and companies—we documented over 3,700. So, there’s absolutely no reason to think the same kinds of measures, a little bit watered down, are going to do the trick.
It’s almost impossible to keep track. And then you have other transactional things, like CEOs donating millions for the inauguration or news executives settling defamation suits out of fear, or to protect their business interests. It feels like extortion. How does CREW view these developments?
You are seeing a lot of corporate America deciding, without being specifically prompted, that they have to get on Donald Trump’s good side to avoid bad things happening to them, which is why you see a lot of these million-dollar gifts. And that is corporate influence on politics, which is an old story, but also somewhat coerced corporate influence, where all of these folks seem to be afraid they’ll lose out in a major way if they don’t do this.
It’s a similar feeling with people reaching settlements on defamation cases that don’t seem merited or required by the law. And you have things that seem potentially related, like the pardons of all these January 6 defendants, which sends the message that that committing crimes on behalf of Trump is something you can get away with. I think that rightly intimidates people who worry about getting on Trump’s bad side.
Maybe it also sends a message to officials who get orders from Trump that they might view as unethical or illegal.
I think it does, yeah.
Do you have any hope this administration can be reined in?
There’s a lot to be distressed about—a lot of conduct that appears to be either lawless or aimed at getting away with whatever the law or its enforcement will allow—or intimidating people. And we’ve seen the collapse of efforts over the years to hold Trump accountable. All of that is deeply troubling.
Where I am a little more hopeful, particularly with regard to corruption and self-enrichment, is that I think the American people don’t have much appetite for government officials getting rich off government positions, for millionaires and billionaires making all the decisions, and for money being thrown around to influence decision-making. If it really is reported on, there will be pushback, and that may make it possible to start putting the brakes on some of that conduct. It’s going to be a long process.
But we all knew who Trump was, and he got almost half of the votes!
That’s right. But I think those parts of Trump’s presidency had faded from people’s minds, and I don’t think that was what they had in mind when they voted for him. My suspicion, based on the first time around, is that when people start to see this kind of influence and potential corruption, they’re not going to like it.
