As Heather put it, the only people Donald Trump was supposed to serve as president were the American people. Still, Lumpy admitted to Fox's Bret Baier that he was "doing services" for foreign governments, so it was OK that he made a fortune from foreign governments. Trump violated the emoluments clause, and now he's acting like it wasn't a big deal. It's there for a reason.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, demanded that Trump return that money over his "stunning violation" of the Constitution. Raskin appeared on Chris Hayes's show and will not let this slide. As Hayes noted, Raskin penned a letter to Trump to request that he immediately return the money.
"We want it back. He's not allowed to keep a dime of it without coming to Congress first," Raskin said. "We know of $7.8 million that belongs to the American people and not in Donald Trump's pockets."
"He never came to Congress," he continued. "They've been covering up for this for seven years. When we finally got the Supreme Court to rule for us, then the district court to do an order, we had four months of compliance before Chairman Comer shut it down."
Raskin explains that Trump didn't deny receiving the millions of dollars. Instead, because of the ex-president's narcissism, he bragged about it. Meanwhile, Raskin explains, Republicans are focused on impeaching President Joe Biden for the same type of thing, but they have no proof to back that up.
"It didn't happen when he was president," Raskin said. They've been chasing Hunter Biden around, and again, I've become convinced; I used to think this was about the scandal that they found politically useful. It's partly that it generates content for Fox News."
"I now really think it's a weird form of trying to essentially psychologically torture Joe Biden with this ritual humiliation of his son, essentially. but there is a response now, where they voted to hold him in contempt as he was sitting in front of them. in your committee, saying, I'm here if you want to talk to me," he continued.
Raskin also brought up the $2 billion that Jared Kushner walked away with from the Saudi Bonesaw Prince. And when Trump's enablers excuse him for his blatant disregard of the Constitution by saying that he didn't take a salary, the Democrat says, "I'm sorry, but that's all you're allowed to take."
And that's precisely it. Trump could refuse his salary, but that didn't permit his greedy little hands to take millions of dollars from foreign governments, including China.
