Frosh joins DC in suing Trump over foreign payments

In January, Trump declared he was shifting his business assets into a trust that his sons would manage in order to do away with possible conflicts of interests.

Frosh said at the news conference that Trump regularly welcomes foreign diplomats to his hotel and appears frequently at Trump establishments, "using his role as president to raise their public profile".

The lawsuit alleges that Mr Trump has violated the Constitution through leasing properties held by foreign governments and by allowing foreign governments to buy apartments and hotel rooms in properties owned by his company. "It's unprecedented that the American people must question day after day if actions are taken to benefit the United States or to benefit Donald Trump".

Frosh said in a statement on Monday that Trump's "wide-ranging business entanglements violate the Constitution's Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses".

According to the publication, if a federal judge accepts the claim, the prosecutors would require disclosing Trump's tax return for determining the scale of the foreign transactions of his business.

Frosh said attorneys would attempt to obtain copies of Trump's tax returns as part of the lawsuit. He says the Trump administration will continue to move to dismiss the lawsuit in the normal course of business.

According to the Constitution, federal officials, including the president, may not accept "emoluments" or other gifts from foreign governments without the permission of Congress.

In New York, Trump Tower leases space to the Chinese government-controlled bank ICBC, and Trump World Tower and other properties also focus on foreign clients, including Russians, it said. The domestic emoluments clause forbids the president from receiving any other "emolument" while he's in office, generally defined as a payment or other financial benefit. A nonprofit restaurant group and others have joined the suit since.

That puts the district in a "unique position" to file legal claims over the emoluments clause, Racine said.

The White House cast the litigation as a political stunt, and said the president's business interests do not violate the Constitution.

But Stanford's Michael McConnell disagreed that the clause applies, saying Trump's ownership stake in the Trump Organization, which does business overseas, is not the same as Trump dealing with another country personally. "You got no emoluments clause there, and it's absolutely clear that the framers of the Constitution intended that to protect us from presidential corruption".

Much of the complaint stems from a lawsuit filed by liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington earlier this year, but supporters of the Maryland-D.C. lawsuit hope that Racine and Frosh can push further ahead than their predecessors due to their positions in the USA government.

Payments to Trump's hotels do not qualify as a violation of the emoluments clause, which is meant to cover personal services performed by the president, the government said. The founding fathers set up the clauses to limit the influence a foreign country or an individual state could wield over the president.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump International Hotel in D.C. has taken customers away from businesses in Maryland and the capital.