Even by the historically low standards of the Trump administration for integrity in public office, last week was extraordinary.
It began with revelations about the $82 million that presidential daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband earned while serving as unpaid advisers to President Donald Trump.
It continued with suggestions by a federal judge that he was inclined to agree with the lawsuit charging that Trump’s profits from foreign entities patronizing his Washington, D.C., hotel violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.
It included another revelation about Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator and non-stop grifter — this one about scoring tickets to January’s sold-out Rose Bowl football game with the help of an oil company public relations man.
And then there was the big one: a lawsuit laying out the relentless self-dealing and campaign-law violations committed by Trump’s family foundation. This one could lead to multimillion-dollar fines and criminal charges if the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission do their jobs.
This is shameful. Any Congress with a pulse and a shred of decency would be holding nonstop hearings on these and a litany of other contemptible actions.
It’s hard to know where to begin, but since Trump’s casual disregard of laws governing charitable foundations began long before he became president, that’s as good a place as any.
David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for reporting on the Trump Foundation’s various scams. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, in the lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan, amplified his findings and focused on the Trump Foundation’s violations of federal election law during the 2016 presidential campaign. She said the foundation was “little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality.”
Trump and his three oldest children, Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric, sat on the foundation board. But the board hadn’t met since 1999. After 2008, Trump himself didn’t contribute to the foundation but used charitable contributions to promote his own interests. In 2016, the foundation raised at least $2.8 million from the public, and his campaign staff directed how it would be spent. This violates IRS law forbidding charities from taking part in political activities.
This pattern of willful violation of legal and ethical standards has become the norm in Trump World. The Trump Organization turned over to the U.S. Treasury the $151,470 it said it made last year from foreign nationals at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. But influence can’t be un-bought.
Similarly, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, like the president, continue to profit from their business interests despite massive conflicts of interest with their government positions.
Pruitt has abused his position in dozens of ways, big and small, with a grandiose sense of entitlement. Where would he have learned that?
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch