Trump’s businesses received ‘$7.8mn’ from foreign states during his term

Donald Trump’s businesses have received at least “$7.8 million in payments” from foreign governments during the term of the former US president in office, according to a Congressional report.

House Democrats released a 156-page report titled White House for Sale on Thursday, showing Trump's companies had received the money from foreign officials from China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo – among some 20 countries.

The foreign countries' representatives had paid money to Trump's hotel and real estate businesses during his presidency, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee wrote in their report.

The report shows during his tenure, Trump was “determined not only to keep this well-branded global corporate empire going but also to seize a new and unprecedented opportunity to make it ever more lucrative for himself and his family.”

The committee said such revenue from overseas governments violated a US constitutional ban on “foreign emoluments.”

“As President, Donald Trump accepted more than $7.8 million in payments from foreign states and their leaders, including some of the world's most unsavory regimes.”

“Saudi Arabia paid at least $615,422 in prohibited emoluments to former President Trump's businesses over the course of his term in office from just (the Trump World Tower) and the March 2018 stay at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC,” the report stated.

“Former President Trump has also boasted about the continued willingness of the Saudis to do business on terms highly favorable to him.”

“We know about only some of the payments that passed into former President Trump's hands during just two years of his presidency from just 20 of the more than 190 nations in the world through just four of his more than 500 businesses.”

In the meantime, Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, separately faces a civil fraud trial in New York over claims that his real estate businesses fraudulently inflated the value of their assets.

The ex-POTUS is to go on trial in Washington in March for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and in Florida in May on charges of mishandling top-secret government documents.

Trump also faces racketeering charges in Georgia for conspiring to upend the election results in the southern state after his 2020 defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.

The twice-impeached former president on January 3 filed an appeal against a decision by Maine’s top election official disqualifying him from the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot in 2024.

Trump appeals disqualification from primary ballot in Maine

Former US President Donald Trump has appealed against a decision disqualifying him from Maine

Trump’s legal team is expected to file an appeal to a similar ruling from Colorado’s Supreme Court. The appeal of the Colorado ruling may force the US Supreme Court to weigh in directly on his 2024 election prospects. In this regard, legal experts say the move will likely pull the court's nine justices into a political firestorm.

“I'm sure the (Supreme) Court would prefer to stay out of these questions,” said NYU Law Professor Richard Pildes. “But I think the fact that you now have two state systems that have reached the conclusion that he should be disqualified from the ballot, it makes it hard to see the court being able to stay out and not provide an ultimate answer to that question.”

The present assemble of the US Supreme Court's judges, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices who were appointed by Trump during his presidency, is in favor of him and the Republican Party, prompting states to apply their own standards of eligibility for office and possibly ignore an unfavorable court ruling, inflicting irreparable damage on the already disfigured US democracy.

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