Lawsuit: Trump business ties violate Constitution

NEW YORK — To fight what it called a “grave threat” to the country, a watchdog group on Monday filed a lawsuit alleging that President Donald Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his business to accept payments from foreign governments.

The lawsuit claims that Trump is violating a clause in the Constitution that prohibits him from receiving money from diplomats for stays at his hotels or foreign governments for leases of office space in his buildings.

The language in the clause is disputed by legal experts, and some think the lawsuit will fail. But it signals the start of a legal assault on what Trump critics see as unprecedented conflicts between his business and the presidency.

Trump called the lawsuit “without merit, totally without merit” after he signed some executive actions Monday in the Oval Office.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York.

The group is being represented in part by two former White House chief ethics lawyers: Norman Eisen, who advised Barack Obama, and Richard Painter, who worked under George W. Bush. The two have expressed frustration Trump has refused to take their recommendation and divest from his business.

“As the Framers were aware, private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders,” the lawsuit argues, “and entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping, insidious threat to the Republic.”

White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks said that “the president has no conflicts,” and referred to arguments made by Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon at the president’s news conference earlier this month.

Dillon has said the framers did not intend for the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution to ban fair-value exchanges, such as money for use of venue space or rooms at a hotel.

They didn’t think “paying your hotel bill was an emolument,” Dillon said at the Jan. 11 news conference.

Trump drew fresh legal attacks from critics almost from the moment he took the oath of office on Friday.

The group behind Monday’s lawsuit also filed a complaint Friday addressed to the General Services Administration, an agency that oversees the lease of the government-owned building that houses Trump’s new Washington hotel. The complaint argued the agency must cancel the lease because it expressly forbids an elected official from benefiting from it.