Ethics experts cry foul at Trump’s push to host G-7 at Doral resort

“Our entire system is built on the idea that public service is a public trust. The glue that holds our democracy together is the buy-in from citizens that our elected officials are acting in their best interest and making decisions for them,” said Delaney Marsco, legal counsel on ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. “The idea that you have an elected official, and one of the most powerful people in the world, making decisions based on what’s going to line his own pockets is a slap in the face to that principal.”

While speaking to reporters Monday at this month’s G-7 summit in Biarritz, France, Trump made the sales pitch for Trump National Doral to serve as the site for next year’s gathering of world leaders, calling it a “great place to be.”

The resort, he said, is close to Miami International Airport, can easily accommodate world leaders and their respective delegations, and would provide ample space for media covering the event.

“We have a series of magnificent buildings; we call them bungalows. They each hold from 50 to 70 very luxurious rooms with magnificent views,” Trump told reporters. “We have incredible conference rooms, incredible restaurants. It’s like such a natural, we wouldn’t even have to do the work that they did here.”

The president suggested his advisers had already scouted Doral and other places as a potential location for the event, and the White House appeared to confirm the resort would be the site of the G-7 in 2020, tweeting from the official account a video of Trump in which he “shares the location of the next @G7 summit, hosted by the United States.”

But hosting the summit at Trump’s property crosses an ethical and constitutional line, said Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush.

“If he received any money, the Trump Organization, the resort, any money from any foreign government for hotel rooms, food, beverages, ballrooms, these villas he’s talking about, any money from any foreign government, then he will be in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” Painter said. “I don’t see how he can do this at his resort unless he wants to comp anything and everything.”

The emoluments clause prohibits presidents from accepting gifts or money from foreign governments unless they receive congressional approval.

Congressional Democrats are already probing whether the president violated the emoluments clause through his continued financial interest in his Washington, D.C., hotel, which has counted foreign governments among its patrons. His ownership in the Trump International Hotel has also prompted lawsuits from state attorneys general, congressional Democrats, and advocacy groups, two of which have been tossed out.

But holding next year’s G-7 at Trump’s Miami-area resort is likely to prompt even more scrutiny from his political opponents.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said such a move “would be one of the most egregious examples of corruption and self-dealing in a presidency replete with them.”

“Trump is using the office to line his own pockets at the expense of the American people and our standing in the world,” Wyden said, adding that the Treasury Department should not allow Doral to be chosen as the site of the 2020 summit.

The location of next year’s event may not yet be finalized, but Marsco of the Campaign Legal Center said that if Trump were to host world leaders, thousands of officials, and U.S. and foreign press, it is a “prime example of how President Trump has been profiting off of his presidency and using his public service to prop up his businesses.”

And even by raising the specter of the G-7 taking place at the Doral resort, the president has been advertising the property on the world stage, Marsco said.

“The ethical damage has already been done,” she added. “He’s already attempting to drive business to a struggling property of his.”

The president’s financial disclosures show the 643-room Doral resort brings in the most revenue, but its net operating income fell nearly 69% in two years, according to the Washington Post. In 2016, as Trump made his run for the White House, the PGA Tour announced it was moving the annual tournament held there.

While Trump has faced claims he is profiting off the presidency, he has dismissed such allegations. After he won the White House, Trump turned over management of the Trump Organization to his two sons but did not divest from his business. Then, in an effort to assuage concerns of accepting money from foreign governments in violation of the Constitution, making him susceptible to foreign influence, Trump pledged to donate all profits from foreign government customers at his properties to the Treasury.

Painter said that if Trump did divest from the Trump Organization, “a lot of the emoluments problems would go away.”

But even if the president severed financial ties with his company or did not charge foreign governments attending next year’s G-7 for any accommodations, food or services at his South Florida resort, Trump’s proposal has its perils.

“You still have the fact that he’s using his position to promote the business, and that’s unethical even if it weren’t illegal,” he said.

Trump, meanwhile, rebuffed the notion he is profiting from the presidency and would do so if the G-7 were held at his property, instead saying Monday that being president will cost him between $3 billion and $5 billion.

“In my opinion, I’m not going to make any money,” he said. “I don’t want to make money. I don’t care about making money.”