Trump's Vegas Partner Says Business Is Not Dividing Profits From Foreign Governments As Promised
Forbes
by Dan Alexander
Two months ago Donald Trump’s lawyer Sheri Dillon stood in Trump Tower and announced that the president would donate all profits from foreign governments at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury—part of an effort to resolve concerns that the he would be in violation of a little-known clause in the U.S. Constitution the day he took office. Now Phil Ruffin, who owns the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in a 50-50 joint venture with the president, says that’s not happening.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Ruffin, sitting in his office inside the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, which he owns separately from the president. Is there a plan in place to hand over the profits at Trump's Las Vegas property eventually? “They have to pay like everybody else,” Ruffin said. But if he did chop away the profits from foreign dignitaries, would that affect the value of the hotel? “They’re not going to do that,” Ruffin said, before repeating: “They’re not going to do that.”
When subsequently questioned, the president’s son Eric Trump, who now serves as co-chief of his father’s business, directly contradicted Ruffin. “It’s something that our internal controlling teams take seriously,” said Eric Trump, in his glass office in Trump Tower. “At the end of the year, that money will go to the Treasury. Again, we didn’t need to do it. It’s probably the right thing to do. We didn’t need to do it. But it’s something we are doing and will do. We’ll watch it closely.”
So will ethics experts. The president is facing a lawsuit by a bipartisan group of government watchdogs and legal scholars who, even before questions about whether Trump was following through on his plan to hand over profits, claimed that he was violating a previously obscure section of the Constitution called the Emoluments Clause. The barely litigated clause prohibits federal officials from receiving “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” Some foreign dignitaries have already told reporters they will stay at Trump hotels to try to ingratiate themselves with the president. Legal experts are divided over whether that sort of payment would violate the Constitution.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/03/22/phil-ruffin-trump-las-vegas-emoluments-profits-constitution/#1e6370f324d7
