Trump is Selling Out Our National Security and the Constitution All At Once [View all]

The Constitution did not envision a president who would auction off the republic in broad daylight and dare the system to stop him. But it did anticipate the danger of foreign money corrupting American power enough to explicitly forbid it. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, The Foreign Emoluments Clause, states that no federal officeholder shall accept “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign state without the consent of Congress. Even the appearance of foreign influence on an American president can corrode our democracy.

And yet, right now, Donald Trump is doing exactly what the framers feared: selling his office, his family’s business interests, and the nation’s strategic policy to foreign powers that clearly benefit from his decisions.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and de facto head of the country’s intelligence apparatus, agreed to invest roughly $500 million in a Trump-linked cryptocurrency venture just four days before Trump’s inauguration, with more than $180 million flowing directly to Trump-linked entities.

This is not a random business deal. It is a foreign government official, responsible for intelligence strategy and diplomatic influence, taking a major financial stake in an enterprise affiliated with the incoming American president and his chief foreign policy emissary, Steve Witkoff. There was no disclosure, no congressional review, and no ethics oversight.

https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/trump-is-selling-out-our-national