The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 13 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Over the weekend, the news broke that President Donald Trump is accepting a $400 million luxury jet from the country of Qatar to serve as Air Force One. This extraordinarily brazen act may well violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which bars foreign gifts to officials unless expressly authorized by Congress. Trump has been lashing out wildly at anyone who dares question his intentions in this regard, which is funny because this comes even as he’s embarking on a Mideast trip in which he’ll visit countries that are the sites of Trump-branded developments and Trump-aligned businesses are scooping in huge sums from private companies and foreign governments via his crypto grift. Today we’re discussing all of this with Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, thank you so much for making time for us today.
Jamie Raskin: I’m delighted to be with you, Greg.
Sargent: So President Trump was asked to respond to the news that he will accept the jet from Qatar. Here’s what he said.
Reporter (audio voiceover): Mr. President, what do you say to people who view that luxury jet as a personal gift to you? Why not leave it behind?
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): You’re ABC fake news, right? It’s only, only ABC. Well, a few of you would. Let me tell you, you should be embarrassed asking that question. They’re giving us a free jet. I could say, No, no, no, don’t give us. I want to pay you a billion or $400 million or whatever it is. Or I can say, Thank you very much. There was an old golfer named Sam Snead. Did you ever hear of him? He won 82 tournaments. He was a great golfer. And he had a motto: When they give you a putt, you say, “Thank you very much,” you pick up your ball, and you walk to the next hole. A lot of people are stupid. They say, No, no, I had just started putting it. Then they putt it and they miss it, and their partner gets angry at them. You know what? Remember that. Sam Snead. When they give you a putt, you pick it up and you walk to the next hole and you say, “Thank you very much.”
Sargent: Congressman, Trump is very angry that anyone would dare question his integrity. And he seems to think the White House should just accept this the way a golfer would accept a free putt. Your response to what Trump said there?
Raskin: Well, he has some reason to assume he’s going to be able to get away with this absolute racketeering and ripoff of the American people—because he got away with it in the first term. They used the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which I call the “Washington emolument.” And they use the Vegas hotel and they use the New York hotels and apartment buildings, and they use the golf courses as a way to funnel money in from foreign governments like China and Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
They violated not just the foreign emoluments clause, but the domestic emoluments clause in taking millions from the Secret Service and other federal agencies and departments when they stayed at various Trump properties. So at this point, he feels completely uninhibited and unbridled for the crypto scam and now just to openly take a $400 million jet plane gift from Qatar. But of course, it’s an absolute defiance of the meaning of our Constitution.
Sargent: I want to give you a chance to respond to the substantive argument he’s making—if that’s the right term for it. What he seems to be saying is that this is actually a gift to the United States and to U.S. taxpayers, and that it’s prudent to accept it so that taxpayers don’t have to pay for Air Force One. But even if one grants that this is Trump’s real intent, we still don’t want the White House to accept it because it raises questions about U.S. policy and its neutrality toward Qatar going forward, right? Can you talk about why we don’t want the White House to accept this, even on the standards that Trump has declared here?
Raskin: Yeah. His argument is simply not credible with respect either to the facts or to the law. First of all, we have Air Force One. We have an airplane that’s working perfectly fine. And it’s Donald Trump who has been the one whining about it and demanding a new one. So that’s why his friends in Qatar decided to give it to him. So it completely defies credulity to argue that this is somehow an imperative for the U.S. government. In any event, if that were to be the case, then we should cancel the order on the other one because we clearly don’t need two Air Force Ones. Or if they were going to lend it to us the way that the U.S. lent the aircraft to the United Kingdom during World War II—well, in that case, at the end of it, either we would return it to them or we would be able to sell it. And then if it’s a real gift, the money can go to pay off the debt. But instead, it’s going to Donald Trump’s personal library. And of course, federal government money can’t be used for that because that’s all privately raised.
So really what’s going on, and anybody can see it, is he wants a new airplane. He wants this castle in the sky. He gets it for while he’s president and then he gets it afterwards when it technically goes to his library. But I don’t think they’re going to put it on the shelves of the library. I think he’s going to continue to fly with it. And by the way, I don’t think his library exists yet.
Sargent: Well, he says that he’s not going to use it after his presidency, but I assume that if Democrats were to take charge of everything after this presidency is over—presuming it does end at some point—then Democrats would aggressively recoup whatever emoluments Trump is making off with.
Raskin: Well, yeah. Look, the thing is that legally his argument makes no sense. The Constitution says in Article 1, Section 9 that nobody holding an office or trust in the federal government, obviously including the president, can without the consent of Congress take a present, an emolument in office, or a title of any kind without congressional assent. So he’s got to come to Congress if he wants it. Of any kind, whatever. This is clearly a present of some kind. Come to Congress—if there’s no problem with it, if it makes financial sense for the American people, if it makes national security sense, if people are convinced it’s not filled with surveillance and detection machinery and it’s consistent with the national security of America, by all means bring it to Congress and let us vote on it.
Abraham Lincoln came to Congress in the middle of the Civil War. He got this beautiful elephant tusk from the king of Siam, and he wanted to keep it. He sent it over to Congress and he said could he have it, and they said, Abe, you’re doing a great job. We love all your work on the Civil War, but no, you can’t keep it. Turn that over to the Department of the Interior or State. I can’t remember which one they sent it to.
Sargent: Well, it doesn’t even matter, right, to your point, it doesn’t matter if Trump is saying he won’t use it after. He still has to go to Congress.
Raskin: That’s the point. The framers predicted just situations like this. They didn’t want us debating, Is it in our national security interest? Is it consistent with public integrity? Is it safe and so on? They said, Let Congress debate that. Let Congress decide it so it doesn’t engulf the whole country. And the Supreme Court found in the last term when we started going through all this stuff with the Trump hotels and the golf courses and everything, they said, Nobody’s got standing to raise it. Congress has to deal with it, so Congress must deal with it.
Sargent: Well, let’s talk about the larger context here. The Trump family’s company just struck a deal to build a golf course in Qatar. We just learned that a fund backed by Abu Dhabi will be doing a $2 billion deal using the Trump business’s digital coin. There’s a ton more like that. These are foreign governments basically handing money to Trump via these deals. Can you give us the overall picture here?
Raskin: Well, what we’ve got is like the Trump hotel on steroids in this term. Because they were collecting tens of millions through the hotels and the various golf courses. That just looks like a mom-and-pop operation today. With Trump’s embrace of crypto—and his presidential memecoin—that opens up this cavernous gateway for foreign governments to be funneling money directly in to Donald Trump. As he manipulates the stock market with his various Trump tariff schemes—and he knows when the market’s going to go up and when it’s going to go down—a word to the wise in these foreign governments can make them tens of billions of dollars. And then they can funnel money back to him through the crypto mechanism. We’re talking about corruption at just an epic scale right now.
Sargent: Indeed. The New York Times reports, by the way, that some Republicans are questioning the wisdom of Trump’s decision to accept the jet. Of course, they’re doing this privately. Can I ask, are you talking to any House Republicans about the prospects for conducting some oversight here? And if so, what are they saying?
Raskin: Well, we’re not in session. We’ll be back in session tomorrow, so I hope I’ll get the chance to interact with them. I’ve definitely sent some messages out. It’s been tough historically on the emoluments questions to get them to take a stand. But again, we’re talking about levels of corruption that are just larger than life and that the whole world can see. And the reason why we should stick to the wisdom of the founders is that you just say categorically, You can’t accept this unless you go to Congress, and then they have to make their case to Congress. They don’t make a case in the court of public opinion and online on why it’s such a good idea—they can explain it to Congress, and then we can decide.
Every other president in U.S. history has come to Congress with far smaller things than this. Some of them have even come on things that are nonmonetary in nature, like when President Kennedy was offered Irish citizenship and then declined to do that after getting advice not to do it. Or remember, Obama refused to accept $1 million that went with the Nobel Peace Prize. But Donald Trump is in a class by himself, and he’s talking about pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods and services. And you don’t have to wonder why some of his friends on the Supreme Court, like Clarence Thomas, have the idea that they’re entitled to take whatever they want from their billionaire sugar daddies.
Sargent: Can I ask you, Congressman, what will you ask House Republicans to join you in doing?
Raskin: Well, one of the problems is that we were not able, in last several years since all of these violations of the emoluments clause started, to institute a new procedural mechanism for dealing with this. Basically all we have is the language of the Constitution. That was enough for other presidents, so we don’t really have that procedural muscle. What we’re going to have to do is get them to join us in asking Donald Trump—or telling Donald Trump—he’s got to come to Congress to request our consent before he moves forward in accepting this.
Then I would hope that we could work together on a bipartisan basis to actually institute a legislative machinery to deal with this, so that there is a requirement that a president who’s collecting—or proposing to collect—emoluments has a system for coming to Congress, asking for it, we will get back to him [by] a date certain. And if we approve it, he can go forward. And if not, he can’t. And if he does go forward nonetheless, then we have civil and potentially criminal sanctions for violating this central constitutional command, which tries to establish a wall of separation between the formal workings of the government and the private finances of the president.
Sargent: So you’ll be formally asking House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and maybe others as well to make a formal declaration to Donald Trump that he must come to Congress in order to vet this and and get authorization to do this?
Raskin: Yeah, we need the Congress of the U.S. simply taking a stand to tell the president, It has come to our attention that you’re proposing to accept a $400 million present from the government of Qatar. Without prejudicing whether we would accept it or reject it, it must come to Congress, so go ahead and submit your request to us.
Sargent: Do you think that there’s a chance that House Republicans—any—will join you in this?
Raskin: Well, remember, we’ve got extremely slender margins. It would just take a handful of Republicans coming over to our side to make the formal demand in a resolution that the president have to come to Congress. So I’m hopeful that if we turn up the heat on this—because it really goes to the public integrity of the entire federal government—that we’ll get enough Republicans joining us. We’re looking for less than 5 percent of the Republicans who’d be willing to join us.
Sargent: It looks to me like there’s an opening for Democrats to put forward a resolution saying this, is there?
Raskin: Yes.
Sargent: Will you be doing that?
Raskin: That’s what we’re going to be working on this week. Yeah. And I’m hopeful that we can get some Republican support with us.
Sargent: Well, there’s another angle here that I think might be worth pursuing. Attorney General Pam Bondi has supposedly provided a legal memo saying that this gift from Qatar is legal, but Bondi herself has been a lobbyist for Qatar. Is there some role here for Democrats and, I guess, Republicans to conduct some oversight here on Bondi? Maybe push to get this legal memo? Anything like that?
Raskin: Yeah, look, our perspective on it is this is Congress’s prerogative. The way that the Constitution is written is nobody can take a present or an emolument without coming to Congress first, so her opinion is essentially irrelevant. If for some reason she can explain why the plain language of the Constitution doesn’t mean what it means, fine. But it sounds like she’s got a conflict of interest of her own. And so we can’t even get to deal with the president’s structural constitutional conflict of interest if we’re hung up on her personal conflict of interest in terms of what she’s done for Qatar. They’ve tied themselves up in knots over there. We got to get back to the basic clarity of the constitutional command.
Sargent: Well, that brings me back to the resolution you’re talking about. It seems like there’s an opening to essentially challenge House Republicans, say, Here’s the resolution that you should be on. Will you join it?
Raskin: Exactly. And that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along. We had a hearing in House Judiciary last week about the budget reconciliation bill, and we just started putting out amendments saying nobody should be deported from the country without due process. The Republicans refused to speak against it, but they all voted against it. We put one out that said that ICE should not be deporting U.S. citizens. They didn’t speak against it, but they voted against it. And so these clear categorical commands that are rooted in the Constitution cannot get their support, but at least there will be a record there for the American people to make a judgment on next year when we get into congressional elections.
Sargent: What kind of language would a resolution like this use? I’m not saying, what would it exactly say, but what would be the basic idea?
Raskin: I’m working on now, but basically it’s a simply a demand to the president to seek the consent of Congress if he intends to keep a $400 million present from a foreign king, prince, or state.
Sargent: Seems like something House Republicans should join, but won’t. Congressman, during Trump’s first term, it was reported that you encountered some resistance from fellow Democrats when it came to pursuing Trump’s violations of the emoluments clause. And as you’ve been saying, Trump is much more brazen this time around. Do you feel like the Democratic leadership is willing to get aggressive enough now on Trump’s emoluments violations? And is there more Democrats could be doing more broadly that you’d like to see?
Raskin: No, I think everybody gets it and everybody understands that the corruption lies at the heart of this authoritarian assault on our institutions. The Trump family has made more than $1 billion a month since the new administration began. The crypto is now a majority of what they’re doing. I think the jet plane is a very concrete and vivid demonstration of what’s going on. And when people get that, then we will be able to explain the more complicated arrangement of how they’re using crypto also to funnel money from you name it—foreign states and governments and royals and potentially criminal organizations, people who are supplicants, people who seeking different kinds of favor from the administration—right through to the president’s pockets. And that’s how this crypto scam is working.
Sargent: It seems, since you brought up the politics of this, I think people maybe don’t remember this, but in 2018 when Democrats took back the House, Trump’s corruption was a key part of the argument, wasn’t it? If Republicans really punt here, as I fully expect they will, there’s an opening to make a political argument against them, isn’t there? Doesn’t this open up the door to really prosecuting a more powerful case against Trump’s corruption and against House GOP complicity with it?
Raskin: Either the government is going to be an instrument for the common good of everybody and it will control the rapaciousness of the people at the top—or alternatively it’s going to be an instrument for the wealthiest and most powerful people, like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and they will plunder the rest of society and they will ruin the achievements of American democracy like Medicaid and Social Security. So I think people will understand that. Is this going to be a government for the few or a government for the many?
Sargent: Well, the lawbreaking is escalating on many fronts around Trump. We’ve learned that Trump’s advisors basically told him he can violate the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate the return of the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Stephen Miller is now hinting at suspensions of habeas corpus. I’ve been wondering: Is there some way for Democrats to telegraph clearly that anyone who breaks the law on Trump’s behalf or carries out an illegal order from Trump would be potentially subject to prosecution later when there’s a real attorney general there? It feels to me like there’s an opening to let the world know a little more vocally that there’s rampant criminality going on.
Raskin: I’m with you in the sense that we need to be identifying lawbreaking as it happens—both ordinary statutory crimes and high crimes and misdemeanors. We need to be specifying what’s going on so people understand the implications of that. And that’s just important for the rule of law. Obviously, Donald Trump is somebody who is perfectly willing to use the pardon power to pardon people who break the law for him. We saw that with the January 6 rioters and insurrectionists. Nonetheless, we have to uphold the rule of law so people understand what’s taking place.
Sargent: Well, on the pardon power, it seems to me that if I’m a Trump flunky or underling and I’m getting a command to carry out an illegal order, I don’t know if I really want to bank everything my entire future on whether Trump will pardon me. That’s why it seems to me there’s an opening for Democrats to essentially, without doing any overt threat, say that under a real attorney general, any crimes committed on Trump’s behalf would potentially be subject to accountability. Is that something Democrats could say?
Raskin: Sure. I don’t see why not. We can absolutely say it. It goes without saying, of course, you know, I don’t think we want to invite a back-and-forth with Trump about how he’ll pardon anybody who the Democrats dare to hold to account under the rule of law. But look, it’s very important for the country to know what the actual rules are, and that’s why this emoluments thing is so critical. No other president has gone anywhere near doing something like this. It’s an outrageous abuse of the law, and Donald Trump will push everything as far as he can go. That’s why we say to our Republican friends, You’ve got to draw the line here. We need to establish boundaries on his behavior. He will literally go as far as you allow him to go, and it’s very important for us to cut it off here. And then we also need to have serious legislative dialogue and make some progress on crypto and the use of crypto to circumvent all of the campaign finance laws and bribery laws of the country.
Sargent: It seems like you’re talking about some sort of legislative mechanism that could put even clearer curbs on emoluments violations. Is that what you’re envisioning? What would something like that look like?
Raskin: We need to have rules in place that require the president to report within a short period of time the receipt, or proposed receipt, of an emolument—seventy-two hours or a week, something like that. And then we will have also a shortened time period for convening under the proper committee to determine whether or not that should be allowed, and then we should bring it to the floor. We need a real mechanism for doing this. It can’t just be the Wild West when it comes to foreign government emoluments. That’s just a trashing of our basic constitutional values.
Sargent: And you guys will put forth some sort of legislation like that and ask Republicans to support it?
Raskin: In the last Congress, I did that, yes, with a group of senators. And we’ll do the same thing. We will absolutely fight for a legislative mechanism to strengthen and enforce the meaning of the emoluments clause.
Sargent: Well, just to go back to the first couple of impeachments, none of them concerned emoluments, although it was reported that you thought that that was appropriate—and I think rightly so. Do you think that if Democrats take back the majority in the House, might there be an impeachment on emoluments given that this stuff has escalated to such a remarkable and pernicious degree?
Raskin: Yes, there are many indications in the conversations of the founders that violations of the emoluments clause were impeachable. It seems to me the cardinal principle of our constitutional system that you can’t use public office for the purposes of private moneymaking. And it’s especially dangerous when what you’re doing is engaging in moneymaking activities with foreign states.
Sargent: Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Raskin: Delighted to be with you, Greg. Hang tough!
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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