To the Editor:
Re “Trumps Hurry to Unscramble Business Ties” (front page, Dec. 25): All the moves discussed by the Trumps to resolve their potential conflicts of interest add up to sacrificing pawns to protect the king(dom)—the Trump Organization.
The Constitution’s Emoluments Clause is unambiguous. It forbids an American president from accepting anything of value from a foreign entity, without congressional consent, because that would open the door to bribery or extortion.
The only way for President-elect Donald Trump to cure this problem would be an arms-length sale by a public trustee, not piecemeal judgments after Jan. 20 about the thousands of possible winks and nods between foreign leaders and the new administration.
Here come the post hoc rationalizations. Unfair to the family? It would probably pocket a cool $3 billion-plus. Voters don’t care? They will after the first scandal, but even if they don’t, popular opinion doesn’t amend the Constitution; only amendments can.
Undoable because of size? Mr. Trump chose to put himself in this situation and cannot now act aggrieved, nor is there a too-big-to-sell exemption in the Constitution; if anything, the larger the potential for conflict, the more urgent a sell-off.
Because of a lifetime habit of cutting corners while pursuing profit, Mr. Trump might assume that he could again just brazen his way through this situation. But the White House is not Trump Tower. Merging public office and self-enrichment would be corrupt, unprecedented, unconstitutional and an ongoing impeachable offense.
LAURENCE TRIBE
MARK GREEN
Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. Tribe is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School. Mr. Green, New York City’s first public advocate, is the author of “Bright, Infinite Future: A Generational Memoir on the Progressive Rise.”
Note from KBJ: There is no evidence that Donald Trump violated the Constitution. This letter is nothing more (or less) than hatred of the successful. I doubt that either Laurence Tribe or Mark Green could run a profitable lemonade stand. By the way, where were these two men when Hillary Clinton was actually accepting bribes from foreign countries?
