Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Sunday that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee were preparing a new report on emoluments (foreign funds) given to Trump’s businesses while he was President.
“We’re going to release a report about all of the foreign government emoluments, millions of dollars we can document that Donald Trump pocketed at the hotels, at the golf courses, through business deals, when he was president and that his family got,” Raskin told ABC News.
Raskin added that under Trump’s presidency, government became “an instrument for private self-enrichment, for the guy who gets in, for his family, for his private businesses.”
The Representative’s assertion came in response to a number of questions about Republican-led investigations of the current President’s son, Hunter Biden. Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss—who’s been investigating Hunter Biden for five years, starting during the Trump Administration—as special counsel in that case.
Weiss requested the appointment after a plea deal with Hunter Biden related to tax and gun possession charges hit a snag and was put on hold in Delaware. Several conservatives have complained about Weiss’ special counsel appointment, despite their having requested it in the first place, accusing the Trump appointee of being “compromised.”
Raskin on Sunday referred to Weiss’ appointment to special counsel as “the rule of law and the justice system working itself out…but our job, I think as political people, is to allow the justice system to run its course.”
As for President Trump’s business dealings, in June the Supreme Court dropped a case brought by House Democrats in 2016, soon after Trump’s victory in that year’s Presidential election, to obtain federal information about former President Trump’s lease of a Washington DC building he used as a hotel. The Court dismissed it, saying it was no longer relevant since Trump was no longer in office.
“I’m concerned not just about public officials like Donald Trump and [his son-in-law] Jared Kushner doing it, but even family members who water ski along for the ride,” Raskin said on Sunday. “And I have been, you know, begging my colleague, [Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY)], for us to do a serious analysis of what the laws should be about money-making” by people in public office.
