WASHINGTON ― As President Donald Trump’s staff cooked up an elaborate scheme to let him award his own golf resort a multimillion-dollar contract despite his “emoluments” problem, in doing so they have admitted that he actually has a problem ― something they have refused to concede since he took office.

Trump announced late Saturday that, because of criticism from Democrats and the news media, he had decided not to hold the next Group of Seven summit at Trump National Doral near Miami’s airport. An alternative location has not yet been announced.

And though “emoluments” ― an 18th century word meaning “payments,” as used by the framers of the Constitution ― are no longer an issue for Trump for the next G-7 summit, the issue remains alive and well in lawsuits against him and as possible grounds for impeachment.

“It has never been OK,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is pursuing one of those lawsuits. “He’s clearly been violating that on a lot of occasions since the start of his presidency.”

Each time that government workers ― Secret Service agents or officials from the State Department or the Pentagon ― stay at a Trump property, government money flows to Trump personally in apparent violation of one of two emoluments clauses in the U.S. Constitution.

Since taking office, Trump has made 24 trips to his club in Palm Beach, Florida; 19 to Bedminster, New Jersey; and one each to Turnberry, Scotland; Doonbeg, Ireland; and Doral. Government employees who have stayed with him on-site at those locations have put hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, and possibly millions, into Trump’s cash registers, so far.

White House officials did not respond to HuffPost queries about whether the previous payments to Trump by the government have violated the Constitution.

Trump himself, meanwhile, continued to disparage those restrictions on his ability to profit from his family business while he is president.

“You people with this phony emoluments clause,” he told reporters Monday at the start of a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Neither emoluments clause, though, is phony. Both were written into the nation’s founding document in 1787.

One prohibits any federal officer from receiving payments from a foreign entity: “No person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

The other prohibits the president from getting payment outside of his salary from either the federal government or any state government: “The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.”