Florida may have violated the Constitution when it donated a valuable property in downtown Miami for President Trump to build a presidential library that is likely to include for-profit businesses, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami on Wednesday.
The suit argues that Mr. Trump, his library foundation, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials and entities violated the Constitution’s domestic emoluments clause, which prohibits the president from accepting money or gifts from states.
While a presidential library is typically a nonprofit institution, Mr. Trump has said his library would most likely also include a hotel in a building depicted in video renderings as a gilded skyscraper.
“It’s going to be most likely a hotel, you know?” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House in March. “This concept could be office, but it’s most likely going to be a hotel with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 Air Force One in the lobby.”
The state gave Mr. Trump’s library foundation the 2.6-acre property in a multistage transaction last year. The board of Miami Dade College, the public institution that had owned the parcel, relinquished the land to a state trust, so the trust could then transfer it to the nonprofit foundation raising funds for the library.
“It has been clear from the start — and has only become clearer in recent months — that President Trump intends to monetize this land for immense personal financial gain,” Miriam Becker-Cohen, a senior appellate lawyer for the Constitutional Accountability Center in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. The center, along with Gelber Schachter & Greenberg, a Miami law firm, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The Trump library foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Mr. DeSantis’s office.
Four plaintiffs filed the suit: two residents who live near the library site; a student at Miami Dade College; and a corporation belonging to Marvin Dunn, a historian and activist who tried to stop the property transaction in court last year. He had hoped to use the property to expand an urban farming program that he runs elsewhere.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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