So...this seems sketchy AF.
Reuters is reporting that 7 foreign governments are renting luxury condos in one of Donald Trump's buildings in New York City. The State Department apparently consented, but Congress has not been consulted, and did not sign off on the arrangement. This seems to be a pretty blatant violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which was put in place to prevent such arrangements, to reduce the potential for corruption in our highest government officials.
Welp. The Founding Colonizers never met Donald J. Trump.
According to Yahoo! Finance,
The 90-story Manhattan building, part of the real estate empire of Donald Trump, had housed diplomats and foreign officials before the property developer became president. But now that he is in the White House, such transactions must pass muster with federal lawmakers, some legal experts say. The emoluments clause bans U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without congressional consent.
We all know how much respect Trump has for Congress and the Constitution, don't we? We also know he's eager to make money however he can, and has made a career of cheating the government and private citizens in order to do it. He brags about that as proudly as he does grabbing women by the p*ssy. Given all of that, let's just say when Congressman Elijah Cummings (Chair of the Oversight Committee) requested information about foreign governments paying money to Trump businesses, he was stonewalled.
The problem doesn't lie just with the corruption of a president. It causes serious danger for our foreign policy.
The governments of Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Thailand and the European Union got the green light to rent a combined eight units in Trump World Tower and followed through with leases, according to other documents viewed by Reuters and people familiar with the leases. Five of those governments - Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and the European Union - had also sought to rent units there in 2015 and 2016, State Department records showed.
[...]
"Letting this go without Congress knowing about it condones the creation of a second, opaque track of foreign policy," said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor at Yale Law School and former legal adviser at the State Department. "What it might lead to is a group of countries enriching the people in power on the mistaken belief that it's going to improve their access."
Meh. What could go wrong? It's not like there have been any problems with Trump being indebted to foreign governments for anything important BEFORE, right?
