Kuwaiti party may put Trump on a spot

Donald Trump and Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto shake hands. Trump promised to pay profits gained by his hotels from foreigners over to the Treasury, but lawyers say that the entire transaction by foreigners should be paid over to the Treasury. Photo: Reuters

Donald Trump and Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto shake hands. Trump promised to pay profits gained by his hotels from foreigners over to the Treasury, but lawyers say that the entire transaction by foreigners should be paid over to the Treasury. Photo: Reuters

Published Feb 27, 2017

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Kuwait - The Kuwaiti government could pay up to $60000 (R7.7 million) to President Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington for a party on Saturday that will be an early test of Trump’s promise to turn over profits from such events to the US Treasury.

The Kuwait Embassy is hosting an event to mark their National Day. Similar National Day celebrations at the Trump International Hotel for a crowd of several hundred can run from $40000 to $60000, according to cost estimates from the hotel. The hotel declined to comment on the figures.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Sheri Dillon, last month pledged at a press conference to donate any Trump Hotel profits from foreign governments to the US Treasury.

The White House and Alan Garten, the general counsel for the Trump Organisation, did not return calls for comment on whether any profits from foreign government payments to the hotel have been donated. Dillon’s firm declined to comment.

Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem al-Sabah said he was paying the Trump Hotel an amount similar to what he had paid the Four Seasons hotel to host a previous National Day event. He said he expected the event to draw 500 or 600 people, but declined to disclose specific cost details.

The Four Seasons, which declined to comment, also charges prices in the $40000 to $60000 range for such events, according to cost estimates.

A watchdog group led by former ethics lawyers for the Obama and George W Bush administrations sued Trump in a federal court in January, accusing him of violating the constitution by allowing foreign government payments to businesses he owns.

Some ethics lawyers say even if Trump turns over all of the profits from the Kuwait National Day party, he would still be in violation of the US constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

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They say all of the income from the event, not just profits, would need to be donated to the US Treasury to avoid contravening the constitutional ban.

Trump resigned in February as an officer of Trump Old Post Office, the company that operates the hotel, but Richard Painter, Bush’s chief ethics lawyer, said the resignation made no difference as long as Trump retained an interest in it.

The ethics experts say Trump is still technically a recipient of payments to his hotels, because he still has an ownership interest in them.

Dillon, Trump’s lawyer, argued that payments to Trump’s hotels do not violate the constitution because “paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present and it has nothing to do with an office.”

She also said that a separate law banning federal employees from engaging in matters affecting their financial interests does not apply to the president. The head of the US Office of Government Ethics agreed in public remarks in January, but said it was “consistent policy of the executive branch” for the president to nevertheless avoid financial conflicts of interest.

Four Democratic US lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on February 16 to assess whether Trump had made any payments to the Treasury resulting from profits at his hotels. GAO spokesman Chuck Young said the request was still being reviewed and the agency had not yet decided what to do about it.

REUTERS

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