"Border Lies" by Randy Rainbow

Prosecutors Subpoena Records from Trump's Scottish Golf Clubs

Source: Vanity Fair

Maryland prosecutors have subpoenaed a company owned by Donald Trump for records related to his Scottish golf courses, seeking information about the president’s possible violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. According to The Times of London, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh demanded the financial filings of DJT Holdings LLC—which owns the president’s Scotland resorts, as well as Trump International Hotel in Washington—as part of an investigation into whether profits from Trump’s D.C. hotel were “flowing to the president through his affiliated entities.”

Before taking office, Trump promised to distance himself from his web of business interests, putting sons Don Jr. and Eric in charge. But Trump Sr. has retained his financial ties to his company, and questions about how his presidency may have benefitted his pocketbook have cast a shadow over his administration, home to others —Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke— who’ve allegedly mined their public offices for personal gain. “We are confident that at the end of discovery we will be able to prove our case that President Trump is violating the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, America’s first anti-corruption laws,” Frosh told the Times.


Trump’s D.C. hotel has been the subject of particular scrutiny, as international officials and business leaders seemingly seek to curry favor with the president by frequenting it. But despite Frosh’s confidence, emoluments cases are rare, and challenging to prove. Potentially more worrisome for the president is the possibility that the Maryland subpoena could reveal the unknown source of DJT Holdings’s funding. In a congressional hearing last year, Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS—the research firm that hired Christopher Steele to assemble a dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia—intimated the company could be financially linked to foreign powers. “The Irish courses and the Scottish courses . . . don’t, on their face, show Russian involvement, but what they do show is enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources,” he said. “It’s hundreds of millions of dollars. And these golf course are just, you know, they’re sinks. They don’t actually make any money.”

Read more: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/trump-scottish-golf-clubs-subpoena-financial-records