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The taxpayer-backed cash grab radiates even outside government officials. Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski opened a business selling his access to the president, even potentially to foreign governments. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen did similarly, trading a direct connection to Trump for six-figure checks.
A new level of corruption in Washington
Still, the president and his defenders deny anything is wrong. Many throw up their hands and say “Washington has always been this way.” That’s certainly what Trump would have us believe. In truth, this level of corruption is rampant in dictatorships across the globe, but unprecedented here.
Do you not realize that's what forums like this one are for?
That'd explain a lot.
.
do you not realize that the reason it is an opinion piece is because it has no facts, and no real investigation behind the piece? chances are the author of the, and lets call it what it really is, HIT PIECE used their political hate for trump, and regurgitated the bull crap she heard from others.
do you not realize that the reason it is an opinion piece is because it has no facts, and no real investigation behind the piece? chances are the author of the, and lets call it what it really is, HIT PIECE used their political hate for trump, and regurgitated the bull crap she heard from others.
It lists a whole bunch of facts to support the opinion. Your affinity for conservative style articles probably made you unaware but this is not some right-wing opinion piece that has no facts or make up facts. This is a solid article that uses facts to support a point.
It struck me that you:
1. Have not read the article.
2. Do not know that opinion piece can contain facts.
There are only two reasons Donald Trump sought this Presidency:
1) To put a feather in his yuge cap, it stroked his ego bigly.
2) To make himself and his buddies even richer.
(There might be a possible 3rd reason, to do his buddy Putins bidding, and be his American puppet in the WH.)
Anyone who thinks that this selfish, self serving little man did it for any reasons to MAGA again has rocks in their head. Donald Trump cares about NO ONE, not even those close to him, so why would he give the sweat off of his brow to peons who are below his stature ? He only needed them for their votes and to keep him in the WH, otherwise. they are like a Kleenex...…...disposable.
In the first judicial opinion to define how the meaning of the Constitution’s anticorruption clauses should apply to a president, Judge Peter J. Messitte of the United States District Court in Greenbelt, Md., said the framers’ language should be broadly construed as an effort to protect against influence-peddling by state and foreign governments.
He ruled that the lawsuit should proceed to the evidence-gathering stage, which could clear the way for an examination of financial records that the president has consistently refused to disclose. The Justice Department is expected to forestall that by seeking an emergency stay and appealing the ruling.
The two constitutional clauses at issue restrict a president’s ability to accept financial benefits or “emoluments” from domestic or foreign governments, other than his official salary. No federal judge before has ever interpreted what those bans mean for the president.
“Sole or substantial ownership of a business that receives hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year in revenue from one of its hotel properties where foreign and domestic governments are known to stay (often with the express purpose of cultivating the president’s good graces) most definitely raises the potential for undue influence, and would be well within the contemplation of the clauses,” he wrote in a 52-page opinion.
He said the Justice Department was trying to equate an emolument with a bribe from foreign or state government officials. But the Constitution already defines bribery as an impeachable offense, and bribery is extremely difficult to prove, he wrote.
The weight of historical evidence shows that the framers meant the emoluments clauses to act as a broader check on influence-peddling that could influence a president’s decisions, the judge said.
“Where, for example, a president maintains a premier hotel property that generates millions of dollars a year in profits, how likely is it that he will not be swayed, whether consciously or subconsciously, in any or all of his dealings with foreign or domestic governments that might choose to spend large sums of money at that hotel property?” the judge asked in his opinion.
“How, indeed, could it ever be proven, in a given case, that he had actually been influenced by the payments?” he added. “The framers of the clauses made it simple. Ban the offerings altogether.”
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