Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and his D.C. colleague, Karl Racine on Sunday stated that they will file a “major lawsuit” against President Donald Trump. Although, they didn’t disclose the content of the lawsuit, they noted that it would be formally announced on Monday afternoon.
The Washington Post reported that the lawsuit would allege that Trump has violated constitutional anti-corruption restrictions by accepting payments and benefits from foreign governments since he became president.
The lawsuit would be the first of its kind brought by a government entity, the Washington Post added. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit activist group, has separately sued Trump in U.S. District Court in Manhattan alleging “countless conflicts of interest” in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
In January, Trump promised to track and donate all profits from foreign government travel and commerce at his companies to the U.S. Treasury. However, NBC News and MSNBC reported last month that the Trump Organization hasn’t been tracking all possible payments it receives from foreign governments.
Company policy detailed in a new pamphlet, suggests that it is up to foreign governments, not Trump’s hotels, to determine whether foreign governments self-report their business dealings.
“To fully and completely identify all patronage at our properties by customer type is impractical in the service industry. Putting forth a policy that requires all guests to identify themselves would impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand”, the company wrote in a nine-page pamphlet outlining its policy.
The Trump Organization shared the document last month with members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in response to a request for information about how the policy would be put into effect. The committee’s top Democrat, Elijah E. Cummings, released the document at the end of May, along with a letter to the Trump Organization in which he said he had “grave concerns” about the policy, and “deficiencies in this approach are obvious.”
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