House Democrats on Tuesday asked all of President Trump’s department and agencies to turn over documents showing how tax money spent on “businesses owned by or affiliated with President Trump.”
Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee cited several media reports showing Trump or his associates benefiting from government business.
“The president’s financial entanglements make it impossible to know whether he is making his decisions in the public interest or to benefit to him or his family members financially,” House Democrats on the panel wrote in a letter to Trump’s Cabinet members. “The president’s continued ownership of private businesses also places federal employees in compromised positions when they work on official activities that potentially create financial benefits for the president or his family members.”
Democrats want Trump to disclose the cost to taxpayers of his use of his own private clubs, including at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, in New Jersey.
“And it has not disclosed whether expenditures by the federal government were paid to the president’s properties or whether the president benefited financially from these expenditures,” the Democrats wrote.
Trump is spending more than two weeks in Bedminster this month in August while the White House undergoes renovations.
In the letter to the Cabinet members, Democrats wrote that Trump “has chosen to break with modern precedent by not liquidating his assets and placing them in a blind trust.”
Trump has placed his business interests in a trust managed by his sons, which critics have argued creates a conflict of interest. Former President Barack Obama also declined to put his assets in a blind trust but his investments were limited to U.S. treasury bonds.
Democrats have requested the documents by Aug. 25.
