Watchdog group files a lawsuit against Trump President’s business ties violate Constitution, it says
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 a constitutional clause prohibits Trump 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 of his first 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 that Trump has refused to take their recommendation and divest from his business, and feel they had no choice but to take legal action.
“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.”
At a news conference earlier this month, Trump Organization lawyer Sheri Dillon said the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution isn’t meant to ban fair-value exchanges. They didn’t think “paying your hotel bill was an emolument,”
she said.
Trump drew fresh attacks from critics almost 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 any elected official from benefiting from it.
GSA officials had said they needed to wait until Trump took office before weighing in on the issue. They have yet to issue an opinion, though, and have not responded to repeated requests for comment. Democrats in the House and Senate on Monday sent letters to Acting Administrator Timothy Horne seeking information about what the agency plans to do.
In the new lawsuit, the group faces several legal hurdles, including making the case that it even has standing to bring the suit.
“There are a lot of issues that have to be litigated for the first time,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of CREW. He added, though, that “we have never had a president who has in a significant way accepted foreign payments.”
Bookbinder said his group will argue it has standing because the president has forced his organization to divert all of its resources to this fight rather than other issues, and therefore is harming it.
That line drew criticism from some legal experts.
Its argument for standing “barely passes the laugh test,” said Robert Kelner, chairman of the election and political law group of the firm Covington & Burling and an experienced Republican attorney.
Edwin Williamson, a former State Department legal adviser, said the group will struggle to prove its case. He agreed with Dillon’s assessment that the emoluments clause does not apply to the payment of a “market price” for a stay at a hotel.