Jamie Raskin Asks Donald Trump To Return $7.8 Million He Received From Foreign Governments

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) demanded former President Donald Trump return the $7.8 million foreign governments paid to his company while he served as president in a letter released on Friday.

“I write today to demand that you immediately return to the American people the $7,886,072 that we know you have accepted from foreign governments in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause — a fact you admitted, once again, at a Fox News town hall this week,” Raskin wrote in the letter addressed to Trump.

Trump admitted that foreign governments paid his Trump Organization millions of dollars for hotel stays during a Fox News town hall in Iowa on Wednesday.

“If I have a hotel and somebody comes in from China, that’s a small amount of money and it sounds like a lot of money,” Trump said. “That’s a small [amount of money], but I was doing services for that.”

After becoming president, Trump refused to divest from his business empire of hotels, real estate, golf courses and resorts and maintained control through a revocable trust led by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. During his presidency, those businesses received $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments, according to a report released by Raskin and House Oversight Committee Democrats on Jan. 3.

Those payments violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause forbidding officers of the United States from receiving anything of value from a foreign government without consent from Congress, according to Raskin.

Trump and his sons have justified the payments from foreign governments like China and Saudi Arabia as simple payments for services rendered at hotels. They claimed to have donated profits received from foreign government payments to the