Photo by Mark Taylor | CC BY 2.0
After Trump’s first weekend in the White House, he awoke Monday morning to an unprecedented hangover: a lawsuit filed against him by legal luminaries of the left.
Many people might have been cheered, as, undoubtedly they figured the suit attacked the new president because he’s racist, xenophobic, was about to deport Muslims, was poised to break ground on the wall between the U.S.-Mexico border, and is a walking war crime about to bomb ISIS and maybe even NATO.
Strangely, the suit alleges none of those things, but charges instead that President Trump is violating the Constitution because…. Foreign governments have booked hotel rooms and office space in Trump properties and could influence Trump business interests in numerous nations, and Trump will receive money from foreign government-owned TV stations who want to show The Apprentice.
Pardon me for, after all the months of fear and hatred directed at Trump and what he represents and his nefarious plans, finding the suit anticlimactic and quotidian. Well, maybe not quotidian, as the suit rests on the arcane ground that President Trump has violated the Constitution’s little-known and virtually never invoked Foreign Emoluments Clause.
If you never heard of the Foreign Emoluments Clause before now, and if you don’t know what “Emoluments” means (gift, compensation, perquisites, advantages), you’re not alone. After all, the clause is included in Professor Jay Wexler’s…