God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and a big bag of money.
- Jack Handey
Regards,
Shodan
Andy surrounded by iiiiiiii makes a good point: avoid cliches like the plague
I don’t fully understand that either, and am still trying to wrap my head around how something unconstitutional can still be legal, or at least, legal enough that impeachment for it would be as far fetched as some would be inclined to have us believe.
IANAL, and IANACS, and IANASCOTUS, so I can only look at the plain language of the constitutional clause, and look at the plain actions taken, and scratch my head when people tell me that they were not illegal. I don’t disbelieve them, and I give the benefit of the doubt when they make the claim that receiving money from foreign governments is an okay thing to do as president, but it makes no sense to me.
Which of those legal scholars cited to case law in their arguments?
The problem is, Aspen, that if you seek an opinion on what happens when you drop elemental sodium into water, and you ask a chemistry professor, the odds are very good that the professor will explain that you get an exothermic reaction that yields sodium hydroxide in aqueous solution and hydrogen gas. It is extremely unlikely that a chemistry professor will feel strongly that reverse osmosis is underused and deserves a larger role in the nation’s chemical discourse, and so will tell you that reverse osmosis is involved.
However, the same thing doesn’t hold true with professors of law. They are often quite willing to advance their theories of what the law should be when asked what the law is.
A good way of separating those opinions from the more fact-based analyses is to read what cases the legal scholar cites. If he doesn’t cite any, then the best that you can say is he is predicting how a court might rule.
An old filker by the name of Frank Hayes wrote some verses that spring to mind:
Ask a housewife how much two and two is
Without hesitation she’ll tell you it’s four
Ask an accountant; he’ll say “I’m fairly certain,
But let me run through those figures once more.”
Ask a doctor; he’ll think about malpractice,
And say “At the very least, I’m pretty sure it’s three.”
But ask a lawyer; he’ll close the door and pull the curtains
And say “How much do you want it to be?”
Might you agree that case law is a tad light on this especial issue? Would the impeachment of a president on the basis of the Emoluments Clause be something on which we’d have an enormous body of case law? If yes, would you be kind enough to point me to the case law that argues in favor of your position?
I cannot speak for the others, of course, but this is my understanding of their argument.
Receiving money from foreign powers is not ok. We know it is not ok. Says so right in the constitution and that clause certainly applies to the president. But, I think the argument goes, that only applies to gifts or direct transfers of money to the president. Since this money is coming in via a business transaction for services then it is fine.
For instance, if the president owns a car he should be allowed to sell it and the money he gets would not violate the emoluments clause even if he sold it to Vladimir Putin.
The problem is this leaves a massive loophole open that makes the emoluments clause trivial to sidestep.
As an example Trump doubled the initiation fee for membership at Mar-a-Lago to $200,000. What changed to merit a doubling of the fee? He became president. Want to line the president’s pockets legally (assuming emoluments does not apply to business transactions)? Buy memberships at Mar-a-Lago. As many as you need to get the result you want.
Voila…squeaky clean right? :rolleyes:
Out of curiosity, when you looked at those words during the Obama administration, I am sure you did not think, “My gosh! The public library in Tauranga, New Zealand bought six copies of ‘Dreams of My Father.’ That could be an emoluments issue!”
But now looking back on it, does that concern you?
If you’re looking at the text of the Clause, that is. Why or why not?
Did you lose your sense of proportion in a divorce settlement?
At least one, in the UK, quoted by AP Radio News. I didn’t quite catch the name, otherwise I’d be providing a link.
Might’ve been about the Russians rather than the Emoluments Clause, though.
Has there ever been an emoluments case?
That aside a lawsuit has been brought against Trump for violating the emoluments clause.
It seems they have some serious standing issues to overcome but presumably they lay out their rationale for why a violation occurred in there somewhere. I do not know how to get the text of their claims and rationale though.
They are (probably) not scholars but clearly some lawyers are trying to make the case.
That’s because science and law are very different.
I don’t even need to drop sodium into water, I can just use math to show you that the properties involved in the two elements will cuase a rapid exothermic reaction.
Law does not follow like that. There are no math equations or axioms to law. It is all literally just made up as you go along. If physics followed the law’s example, then in some jurisdictions, it would explode in water, and in some jurisdictions, it would in some way involve reverse osmosis. There would be no way to predict which it would do, without reviewing case law for that jurisdiction.
I’ve gotten into trouble before by assuming that the law was logical, and that you could extrapolate new laws from existing laws, like you can in science, rather than the more or less arbitrarily set laws we use in the legal system.
Good thing we have the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act which caps gifts at $390.
So, buying six copies would not meet that threshold.
It certainly could be, and if I were him, or in a position to advise him, I would suggest that he make sure that he does not actually get the profits from his books selling to overseas markets, whether the books are sold overseas at a lower rate, any royalties are donated directly to charity (or to the govt as extra tax), or that he simply does not receive royalties on books sold overseas.
Then 6 books isn’t a very good bribe, so I would be less concerned about it swaying his opinion on how to deal with New Zealand in the future, than if it were thousands of books, or a property deal worth millions of dollars, or a trademark dispute that is worth millions of dollars. Is trump donating the proceeds from his overseas profits to charity or to the government? Is trump in a position to be influenced by foreign actors investing in, or spending money in, his properties?
The entire point of the Emoluments clause is to prevent govt officials from having a conflict of interest where they could be swayed by foreign actors to act against the best interests of the country in exchange for personal enrichment. Virtually every other position in government actually requires a blind trust to ensure a lack of conflict of interest, I have to admit that I was surprised when I found out that trump did not need to divest his holdings.
So, I ask, is trump in a position to violate the emoluments clause?
Do you think that trump will put country before his pocketbook?
That’s a 25th Amendment bet, and no way I’d put money on that at 5:1 with the time frame. I would put 100 bucks down on even money that Trump is not president on election day 2020 (death = all bets off). But, there is way too much unknown to put a time stamp on it.
That is, of course, a much more reasonable bet. My bet was originally to a poster who was predicting a July 1 resignation. If there was any confidence in that prediction, surely they’d take it at even money, much less 5 to 1. That is all. Nobody should take my 5-to-1 bet of Trump leaving the WH by July 1, because it’s rather a long shot that something will happen on that timescale.
Emphasis added. She’s such a Kill Joy!
Why just Trump in 2020? Why not the House and Senate elections too, as they come up?
(1) Who cares? We’re talking about the Emoluments Clause. Congress cannot legislate it away. Can they?
(2) Let’s say I accept this limit for some bizarre reason. Whitcoulls of New Zealand bought 1,000 copies of the book. What then?
So, when you learned that, what did you think about the Emoluments Clause? What does it actually prohibit, and how would that prohibition operate?
Yes.
Maybe, by mistake, he might. But generally, no.
So what, though? The question isn’t what I think about Trump’s non-existent moral framework. The question is: what, specifically, does the Emoluments Clause prohibit, and how do you know?