Remember the allegations Hillary Clinton used her public service and charitable foundation to enrich herself and her family?
Those types of charges have started swirling around Donald Trump and won’t stop until he is out of office — if then.
First came a report that the president-elect used a congratulatory phone call with the president of Argentina to request permission to build a 35-story tower in Buenos Aires. Though that has been officially denied, speculation about whether Trump sought to violate the Constitution’s emolument clause during the conversation has continued.
Second came the reports that the Trump Foundation admitted to self-dealing in tax filings. Nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s money to benefit their business, their families or themselves. Trump’s foundation apparently ignored this prohibition, at least in some instances.
Third, Ivanka Trump and her husband have been ubiquitous during the transition, despite the fact the president-elect is supposedly going to turn over his business empire to his children while in office. Ivanka has sat in on meetings with foreign leaders and Jared Kushner is set to have an important, if informal, advisory role.
Finally, on Tuesday, during a meeting with the New York Times, Trump floated the idea that the law doesn’t really require him to de-conflict his businesses and running the government as much as everyone assumes. He appears to be mostly right — it’s mostly political norms that have kept past presidents from engaging in this kind of behavior and Trump has shredded political norms throughout his time running for office.
Imagine how Republicans would be talking if any of this applied to Hillary Clinton. A few are starting to take notice. When Trump zinged the “crooked media” for bringing up his extensive business interests around the world, Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich, retweeted him and said, “You rightly criticized Hillary for Clinton Foundation. If you have contracts w[ith] foreign governments, it’s certainly a big deal, too.”
For good measure, Amash added the hashtag #DraintheSwamp, Trump’s anti-corruption slogan.
During the campaign, Trump slammed Clinton for “turning the State Department into her private hedge fund” and selling access through the Clinton Foundation. He also criticized foundation contributions from Russia and Saudi Arabia.
“It is a sad day in America when foreign governments have greater influence than the country’s people,” Trump said. The Clintons’ pursuit of cash has been a source of scandals for decades and was one of the reasons many people voted for Trump.
Now people are going to start raising questions about whether Trump is above these kinds of messy financial entanglements himself. His critics are going to try to turn him into the next Hillary Clinton.
