At a press conference on Friday marking three years since the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) addressed Thursday’s report by House Democrats showing former President Donald Trump received over $7 million in payments from foreign governments during his time in office:
“It’s very clear in the Constitution: The president of the United States may not accept a present, an emolument (which means a payment), an office, or a title of any kind whatever — from a prince, a king, or foreign government — without the consent of Congress. And yet, we showed yesterday we've got the documented receipts that Donald Trump pocketed $7.8 million from foreign governments — from China, from Saudi Arabia, from the United Arab Emirates — without ever coming to Congress first. It took us seven years to accumulate all of this information. We’ve got a 150-page report with 750 footnotes and they have not laid a glove on our report; they've not found a single thing that they claim to be factually inaccurate. All they're saying is: Well, Donald Trump didn't take his salary of $400,000. I’m sorry, under the Constitution of the United States, that's all you're allowed to take is your salary. You can't get paid by Chinese communist bureaucrats or murderous Saudi monarchs. You've got to be paid by the American people. That's how the framers designed our Constitution.”
