The Emoluments Clause

There has been a large increase in people looking up the word "emolument" on the Internet. It sounds like something you'd spread on a bad sunburn, but instead it means, "a salary, fee, or profit from employment in office." It is a word found in the U.S. Constitution, and the meaning of the clause containing it was recently ruled on by a federal judge.

The text, from Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8, reads: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." The purpose of the clause was to prevent titles of nobility--no dukes or earls or duke of earls in the U.S.--and to prevent meddling by foreign governments in U.S. affairs by bribery. The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel held: "It prohibits those holding offices of profit or trust under the United States from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from “any . . . foreign State” unless Congress consents."

Why the word became searched so much this week is that a suit, brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C. against Donald Trump for violating that clause of the Constitution was allowed to proceed. They accuse Trump of illegally profiting from his office, specifically by hosting foreign dignitaries at the Trump International Hotel.

Judge Peter Messitte has only allowed the suit to proceed, and should it come to trial there is no guarantee Trump would lose. But it does do one thing that Trump fears greatly: during the discovery period, he would have to turn over his books and, presumably, his income tax returns. Robert Mueller, in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, can't even get at those.

Of all the odious things Trump has done while in office, and there are too many to count, one of the worst is his refusal to divest himself of his businesses. The last president to have a business was Jimmy Carter, who sold his peanut farm. Trump merely put his fortune in the hands of his sons, who we can assume will look out after his interests, and Trump can make policy that would best help him (such as his ridiculous tax cut). If Trump had any integrity (ha!) he would have put all of his businesses in a blind trust.

This case won't bring Trump down--he will probably be out of office before a gavel starts anything, but it will put him on the griddle when Americans might get to see how corrupt he really is.