Immediately after acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney announced today that President Trump’s Doral golf club will host next year’s G7 summit, Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano declared such a move represents a clear emoluments clause violation.
Trump’s decision to select his own resort as host of the international gathering is a sign that he is becoming more brazen about flouting criticism from Congress and shattering ethical norms that have been observed by previous presidents with regard to separating the duties of their office from their financial well-being.
Fox Business host Neil Cavuto noted that the announcement of the G7 location “is effectively saying the president has given himself this contract.”
Pointing out that previous summits in the United States took place at Camp David and Sea Island, Cavuto said the White House is arguing that holding the event at the president’s property is not a violation of the emoluments clause.
“I believe the judge has a different notion of that,” Cavuto added, turning to Napolitano.
“It’s not my notion,” the judge replied. “It’s the Constitution’s notion. The Constitution does not address profits, it addresses any present, as in a gift, any emolument as in cash of any kind whatever. I’m quoting the emoluments clause, from any king, prince or foreign state.”
Explaining that this wouldn’t be an issue if this were a meeting of U.S. government officials, Napolitano once again stated that the emoluments clause is to prevent the president from receiving gifts or cash from foreign entities.
“He has bought himself an enormous headache now with the choice of this,” he continued. “This is about as direct and profound a violation of the emoluments clause as one could create.”
Throughout his presidency, Trump has faced allegations that he is using his office to enrich his own business.
The resort has struggled financially since Trump took office, with its net operating income falling 69% over the past two years — in part thanks to “some negative connotation that is associated with the brand,” the Washington Post reported in May.
The G-7 summit will draw hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel to the resort during one of its slowest months of the year, when Miami is hot and the hotel is often less than 40 percent full. It will also provide a worldwide spotlight for the club.
It also appears to signal the collapse of promises made by the president and Eric Trump, his son and the day-to-day leader of Trump’s businesses, at the start of the Trump presidency — when they pledged to create separation between the president’s private business and his new public office.
“I will be leaving my great business in total,” Trump said as president-elect in 2016.
“There are lines that we would never cross, and that’s mixing business with anything government,” Eric Trump said in 2017.
On Capitol Hill, the Democratic-led House has already passed a measure that would ban federal funds from being paid to the president’s properties — a provision that, if it became law, would seem to block a gigantic federal event at the Doral Club.
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), one of 200 congressional Democrats who have sued Trump over his doing business with foreign governments and are investigating Trump’s D.C. hotel, said that president’s ongoing interest was to “leverage the presidency to benefit himself, his family and his associates, rather than the country’s interests.”
Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, also condemned the decision. “The cardinal sin of the Trump presidency is the conversion of his public office into an instrument of private gain and campaign activity,” he said, calling the deal a “sellout of the U.S. government, the Constitution and the American people.”
Trump reported making at least $434 million in gross income from his properties and business in the second full year of his presidency, according to his 2018 financial disclosure form released by the Office of Government Ethics.