Trump's Conflicts Of Interest Give GOP Congress Control With Impeachment Threat
It looks like Trump’s plan to stay in business even as he is President may run into some serious problems after all. I had written about this earlier, but today it came out that the GSA has demanded that Trump needs to sell his new DC hotel before his inauguration or be in violation of the contract and the law. The GSA had leased the former Post Office to Trump in order to build his luxury hotel there. Unfortunately for Trump, that lease had certain provisions, specifically one that states, “No … elected official of the Government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom”. If Trump does not divest the hotel by inauguration day, he will be in clear violation of the lease. Trump has already postponed his announced news conference scheduled for tomorrow where he was going to provide the legal details of how he would separate himself from his company. Those details, and presumably any other press conference, will not occur until some time in January, although the transition team would not confirm whether it would be before or after his inauguration.
In addition, it appears that there may be other legal impediments to Trump maintaining his businesses simply beyond the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution. In 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act which was originally designed to prevent members of Congress from using non-public information that they might know of through their work in government for their own personal benefit, especially by buying or selling shares in the stock market. For decades, this had been an easy “get rich quick” scheme for Congress, especially those on sensitive committees where testimony was provided behind closed doors. The STOCK Act was designed to put an end to this. But Republicans, in their implacable opposition to anything Obama, made sure the act was extended to the executive branch as well as extending it to any gain, not just limited to actions in the stock market. Specifically, the act says, “no executive branch employee may use nonpublic information derived from [or acquired through] their position as an executive branch employee as a means for making a private profit.” The act has been interpreted as also meaning that passing along that information to friends, or in Trump’s case, family in order for them to profit would also be a violation of law.
The real problem with the STOCK Act, however, is how it is currently enforced. If the violation did involve activity in the stock market, essentially insider trading, then the SEC is the enforcement agency. Even under Obama, the SEC has shown itself to be almost toothless and it is likely to get worse, if that is possible, under Trump. If it was an other kind of violation, the only remedy is though Congress via impeachment. Now, impeachment is a real possibility for Trump, especially if he stands in the way of the GOP wish to repeal Obamacare, privatize Medicare, cut Social Security, dismantle the safety net, and take those “savings” and provide massive tax breaks to business and the wealthy. I personally do not think that Trump will stand in the way, but Republicans in Congress certainly know that Mike Pence will not. As we have seen with the Republicans unwillingness to defend America from an attack on our electoral system by a foreign government, maintaining their power is all that matters. If Trump were to be impeached over a violation of the STOCK Act, it would only be because of the GOP’s desire to move him out of the way in order to enact their agenda, not because of the egregiousness of the underlying violation of law.
In any case, as long as Trump and his family do not divest themselves of their business, the chances of a violation of the law through the Emoluments Clause and especially the STOCK Act are extraordinarily high. Now, there are reasons to believe that, because of certain loan guarantees, it is impossible for Trump to divest his business without going bankrupt, which means he will never do it. And that will mean that the Republican Congress will have even more control of Trump, perhaps more than Putin, as they will easily be able to find violations that will allow them to continually threaten him with impeachment.