Trump received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments as president, House Democrats say

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments during two of his four years in the White House, according to a report released Thursday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

Twenty foreign governments made the payments to Trump's businesses during the two-year period that the committee was able to review. The information in the report was first reported by The New York Times and CNN.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in the report's foreword that the payments came from "some of the world's most unsavory regimes," with China being the leading spender, paying more than $5.5 million to Trump-owned properties, according to the report.Some of the other countries that made payments to Trump were Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, India and Afghanistan, the report said.

“This is a limited window on a far-broader universe of foreign government spending that took place,” Raskin told reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Raskin said in the report that the information demonstrates that Trump violated the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, which he said prohibits the president from accepting money payments or gifts "'of any kind whatever' from foreign governments and monarchs unless he obtains 'the Consent of the Congress' to do so."

"Yet Donald Trump, while holding the office of president, used his business entities to pocket millions of dollars from foreign states and royalty and never once went to Congress to seek its consent," Raskin wrote.

Raskin said that the $7.8 million is "almost certainly only a fraction of Trump's harvest of unlawful foreign state money, but this figure in itself is a scandal and