New Congressional Report: Trump Businesses Received $7.8 Million from Foreign Governments During His Presidency

It’s been three years since former President Trump left the White House, and the American people are still learning about how his time in office helped line his pockets.

A new report released by the House Oversight Committee shows that Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from officials and the governments of 20 countries during his presidency. 

Using documents obtained by a court order as well as public records, the committee found that China paid $5.5 million to Trump’s businesses, Saudi Arabia spent $615,422, and Qatar spent $465,744 at Trump properties. The report covers only two years of Trump’s time in the White House — meaning the $7.8 million is likely an undercount of the total Trump received from foreign governments.

According to the report, the payments violated the foreign emoluments clause in the U.S. Constitution, a provision prohibiting federal officials from receiving gifts or money from foreign governments without congressional permission. The committee also suggested that the payments from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a state-owned enterprise that leased property at Trump Tower in New York, could have affected the Trump administration’s 2017 decision not to sanction the bank for its ties to North Korea.

The report confirms what we’ve long known: Trump’s businesses — which he refused to divest himself of as president, breaking decades of practice by his predecessors — got a huge boost from his time in office. American Oversight’s investigations uncovered numerous examples of taxpayer money going to his private businesses. 

Just last year, we obtained records showing that the Defense Department spent nearly $1 million at Trump properties between July 2017 and November 2019, including more than $270,000 at Trump National Doral Miami. The documents also revealed charges for Defense Department events at Trump properties, including at hotels in Las Vegas and New York, the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, and the Trump Hotel in Chicago.

This wasn’t the first time American Oversight had uncovered Defense Department spending at Trump properties. In 2021, we obtained records from the Pentagon detailing a number of trips taken by cabinet and White House officials on military airplanes during the first year of the Trump administration, including several visits to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

And the Defense Department was not the only agency to spend money at Trump’s businesses. Justice Department officials spent more than $5,700 at Trump’s Doral and Soho properties in 2018. Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon employees spent more than $5,500 at Trump properties between 2017 and early 2019, including a roughly $1,600 dinner that DHS official Miles Taylor had with a foreign government representative at a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. 

Kelly Craft, Trump’s ambassador to Canada, blatantly directed government business to the Trump International Hotel while in office. “Is this a meeting I should attend?” Craft asked a staffer in an email we obtained from November 2018. “If so, I would prefer the TRUMP HOTEL.” In another instance, Craft held a meeting with Canadian officials at the hotel. Meanwhile, Woody Johnson, Trump’s billionaire  ambassador to the United Kingdom, paid £1,143 (about $1,500) for a single day of activities at Trump’s golf course in Scotland in July 2018. 

Foreign governments also supported the former president’s financial interest by renting properties that he owned. In 2019, Reuters reported that at least seven foreign governments received State Department approval to rent condos in Trump World Tower in New York without congressional approval. In response, we filed a lawsuit for related records, and received documents that shed light on the State Department’s approval of the leases.

Our investigations also revealed the administration-wide indifference on how to ethically handle the spending of taxpayer money at Trump properties or other businesses in which his family had financial interest. In 2017, we filed more than two dozen Freedom of Information Act requests for records related to government spending at Trump-owned businesses. Two years later, 14 agencies — including the Office of Government Ethics — had told American Oversight they had no records of ethics guidance, a glaring failure of the government to help federal employees know how to navigate the ethical quagmire created by Trump’s refusal to divest.

We may never know exactly how much foreign and taxpayer money was spent at Trump properties during his administration, but the House Oversight Committee’s report provides valuable new information about the potential dangers of such unfettered conflicts of interest.