All three entities spent money at Trump-owned properties, namely Trump Tower in New York and Trump International hotels in Washington, DC and Las Vegas, Nevada.
China far and away led countries in making such payments, with the total from foreign entities tied to 20 countries reaching US$7.8 million, according to the report.
“It is true that US$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 a decisive spur to action,” wrote Jamie Raskin, Democratic congressman of Maryland and the oversight committee’s ranking member, in the report’s foreword.
The former Republican president violated the US Constitution when his businesses accepted these payments without the consent of Congress, the report stated, citing the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
“These countries spent – often lavishly – on apartments and hotel stays at Donald Trump’s properties – personally enriching President Trump while he made foreign policy decisions connected to their policy agendas with far-reaching ramifications for the United States,” the report said.
Ballot power: 2024 elections could steer global relations for years to come
Ballot power: 2024 elections could steer global relations for years to come
It accused Trump of failing to disclose such payments to Congress as other presidents have done, and actively preventing Congress from obtaining information about them.
A businessman before his election to the White House in 2016, Trump broke with American precedent and neither divested from his businesses nor put them into a blind trust after becoming president.
The investigation led to a court dispute that ended in a settlement in 2022. Soon thereafter, Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, began producing the requested documents that formed the basis of Thursday’s report.
The report further recommended that Congress toughen requirements for a US president to notify the body of emoluments.
The committee’s Republican chairman, James Comer of Kentucky, dismissed the report’s findings.
“It’s beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump,” Comer said in a statement. “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses, but the Bidens do not.”