Donald Trump reaped US$5.5 million from China and its state entities during presidency: US House report

Democrats on oversight committee release findings after multi-year investigation, accusing 2024 Republican front-runner of violating US Constitution
Countries from China to Saudi Arabia spent ‘lavishly’ on Trump properties, enriching him while he made foreign policy decisions, report says

US-China relations

Bochen Hanin Washington

Published: 1:21am, 5 Jan 2024

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Businesses tied to former US president Donald Trump accepted over US$5.5 million from China’s government and its state-owned entities during his time in office, according to a congressional Democratic staff report released on Thursday.

Titled “White House for Sale”, the sweeping 156-page report from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability named the Chinese embassy in Washington as one of the entities that spent money at a Trump-owned property from 2017 to 2020.

It also named Hainan Airlines, a Chinese state-owned airline, as well as the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

All three entities paid money to Trump-owned buildings, namely Trump Tower in New York and Trump International hotels in Washington, DC and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump attends a campaign event in Waterloo, Iowa, on Dec. 19, 2023. Trump leads polling among current Republican candidates for the nomination. Photo: Reuters

China far and away led countries in making such payments, with the total from 20 countries reaching US$7.8 million, according to the report.

“It is true that US$7.8 million is almost certainly only a fraction of Trump’s harvest of unlawful foreign state money, but this figure in itself is a scandal and a decisive spur to action,” wrote Jamie Raskin, Democratic congressman of Maryland and the oversight committee’s ranking member, in the report’s foreword.

The former Republican president violated the US Constitution when his businesses accepted these payments without the consent of Congress, the report stated, citing the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

The emoluments clause states that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state”.

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Some of the biggest contributors named in the report apart from China were India, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

“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,” the report said.

It accused Trump of failing to disclose such payments to Congress and actively preventing Congress from obtaining information about them.

A businessman before his election to the White House in 2016, Trump opted to neither divest from his businesses nor put them into a blind trust after becoming president.

Following the 2016 election, Congress started looking into Trump’s possible conflicts of interest and his potential constitutional violations.

The investigation led to a court dispute that ended in a settlement in 2022. Soon thereafter, Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, began producing the requested documents that formed the basis of Thursday’s report.

Democrats on the oversight committee also accused the former president of warming up to Chinese President Xi Jinping in bilateral meetings and claimed that the ability of the Trump family business to secure trademarks in China improved “markedly and rapidly” after he entered office.

The Chinese embassy in Washington on Thursday declined to speak on the nature of any payments made to Trump, saying it does not comment on issues related to US domestic politics.

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In findings that identified spending by foreign governments and entities at Trump-owned properties “all in violation of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause”, the report documented conduct that Republicans now accuse President Joe Biden of in their impeachment inquiry.

In Biden’s case, his son Hunter Biden is accused of using his father’s political office to secure lucrative business deals in China and Ukraine.

Republicans have alleged that the elder Biden was involved in these deals as well.

The report further recommended that Congress toughen requirements for a US president to notify the body of emoluments.

The committee’s Republican chairman, James Comer of Kentucky, dismissed the report’s findings.

The 156-page report found Donald Trump’s businesses received at least US$7.8 million from foreign governments and entities during his presidency, most of it from China.

“It’s beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump,” Comer said in a statement. “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses, but the Bidens do not.”

Richard Painter, a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota who was part of a 2017 lawsuit alleging Trump violated the emoluments clause, called the former president’s situation unprecedented.

“Nobody has had any credible evidence of any other president getting a gift from a foreign government,” he said.

Painter added that the bar for a violation under the emoluments clause is different from bribery, which requires the demonstration of intent to influence an official act.

“Bribery is so hard to prove … and the founding fathers knew this.”

Trump leads polling in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race and appears likely to face off against Biden in a rematch of the 2020 election.