Just yesterday, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting Chief of Staff, announced the location of the next G7 Summit. It will be at none other than the Trump National Doral in Florida. This has stirred a bit of an outrage from the president’s opponents. They believe that this decision will only allow the president to profit from having the G7 at his property.
Mulvaney appeared to quell any controversy by stating they followed the same procedures to choose a location as they would any other. “We used the same set of criteria that previous administrations have used,” Mulvaney said. “Doral is far and away the best physical facility for this meeting.”
This isn’t the first time the president was criticized for using his property to host world leaders. He once asked President Xi Jinping from China to stay at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The two leaders played golf and enjoyed their time together. Mulvaney further addressed the controversy by stating President Trump won’t profit in “any way, shape or form.”
Is the G7 at Doral Even Legal?
The big question now, even among Democrats, is whether Trump hosting the G7 at his resort is even legal. That’s a point brought up by Jerry Nadler, the current House Judiciary Chairman. They want to investigate whether this would violate any of the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses.
“Hosting the G7 Summit at Doral implicates both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, because it would entail both foreign and U.S. government spending to benefit the President, the latter potentially including both federal and state expenditures,” said Nadler. “More importantly, the Doral decision reflects perhaps the first publicly known instance in which foreign governments would be required to pay President Trump’s private businesses in order to conduct business with the United States.”
Nadler isn’t the only one who is questioning the move. Even former White House ethics director Walter Shaub said there would be a conflict of interest.
“This is a conflict of interest because he’s going to benefit by the outcome of this. In fact, if he was any federal employee other than the president of the United States, it would be a crime for him to be involved in this activity,” Shaub said. “He’s exempt from the criminal conflict of interest law but that wasn’t intended as a perk of high office and it was expected that he would act as though he were covered by it.”
