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Impeachment was never going to dislodge President Donald Trump from office, because the Senate was never going to vote to convict. Thus it is worth remembering Bernie Sanders’s early warning that impeachment could devolve into Trump dominating political attention at the expense of bread and butter issues that voters really care about. Could there have been a left version of impeachment? Unlikely. But technically speaking that could have happened if a critique of class power had been the central issue. For that to have happened, emolument clause violations, and specifically domestic emolument clause violations, needed to be the central focus. The two emolument clauses in the Constitution prevent gifts from foreign powers and limit presidential remuneration to only the presidential salary. Trump’s emoluments clause violations, to the extent we can determine without a legally empowered investigation, appear to involve payments made to him by way of booking large chunks of unused rooms at his hotels, and perhaps buying condominiums in his properties. But instead of exploring these questions — i.e., how big business conducts political bribery — we got a national-security-venerating snooze-fest about a small and faraway country. What happened to the class angle? Circumstantial evidence indicates that the House Democratic leadership killed emoluments issues, because hearings focused on corporate influence peddling would have sounded something like a Bernie Sanders rally. Mainstream Democrats are never eager to subject corporations and the rich to harsh public scrutiny. That ideological prejudice seems even stronger now that a socialist is closing in on winning the democratic presidential nomination. After all, many leading Democratic legislators do not merely side with the rich, they are the rich. For example, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was worth $58 million in 2016 and was worth over $100 million for several years before that. One congressperson who wished to not to be identified or quoted told me that some Democrats were uncomfortable investigating Trump’s domestic emoluments violations because that would inevitably open a discussion of politicians and their money, in general. For many elected officials, that strikes too close to home. But early on, emoluments clause issues were in the mix. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, said, “it’s always been emoluments. It’s always been about that for me.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the constitutional legal scholar-turned-Maryland congressman, pushed emoluments issues aggressively in print and public speeches. Many other House members who clamored for impeachment, while Pelosi was still cautioning against it, also made emoluments violations a central concern. Domestic emoluments clause violations — meaning corporate bribery of the president — were a logical, visceral, and obvious place to start. Thus, questions about emolument clause violations — precisely because they are compelling — had to die. Pelosi, in her inimitably arch, gangster style, made sure they did. In her custody, the emolument clause violations simply disappeared. Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee and Gerald Nadler of Judiciary Committee helped by whipping up national security concerns about Ukraine. When Raskin attempted to rally support for investigating emoluments issue after Trump suggested that the G-7 meet at his Doral, Florida resort, Pelosi is said to have told him to back off. What could have been the issues? Without a legally empowered investigation that could subpoena records and compel testimony from corporate personnel, we have only glimpses of what might have been. But those glimpses are revealing.

Corporate Swamp Public Citizen and the independent journalist Zach Everson have conducted some of the best research into Trump’s economic crimes in office. Public Citizen, relying in part on Everson’s work, found “51 U.S. businesses or business groups” that have appear to used Trump properties to curry favor. Everson deserves special mention for the low-tech creativity of his research methods, which were essentially staying at the Trump International, DC, hanging out at the hotel bar, and combing through the social media accounts of corporate executives who passed through. This being the age of compulsive online confession, many a visiting corporate manager, who would never answer a journalist’s questions, mindlessly bragged online about their Trump property visits. After a year, Everson concluded that “Lawmakers, lobbying groups, and would-be powerbrokers were taking full advantage of the chance to better their lot by throwing a few bucks the president’s way.” Public Citizen found that “Business groups holding events at Trump Organization properties include the Institute of International Bankers, which held its 2018 annual conference at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC.… The Community Financial Services Association, which represents high-rate payday lenders, has twice (in 2018 and 2019) held its annual conference at the Trump National Doral golf club near Miami.” Payday lenders have received regulatory rollbacks from the Trump administration. The Options Industry Conference was held at the Trump National Doral Resort. Like other parts of the financial industry, they support financial deregulation. Other corporate guests that held conferences and board meetings at Trump properties include Sprint and T-Mobile, which later had a merger approved by the Trump administration; the Seasonal Employment Alliance, representing businesses that use overseas guest workers; and the National Mining Association, which has pushed for more access to public lands. An important firearms import/export conference was held at Trump’s DC hotel, and later the Trump administration loosened rules on international firearms exports. A long list of energy lobbyists are said to have stayed at Trump’s DC hotel. At least two coal companies had direct dealings with the Trump Hotel during the summer of 2019. As Public Citizen reported, “Murray Energy Corp. CEO Bob Murray and Heath Lovell, a top spokesman for magnate Joe Craft’s Alliance Resource Partners LP, were “VIP Arrivals” for one-night stays on June 20, 2018, according to a list obtained by the Washington Post.” Suggestively, Trump Hotel staff wrote “High Rate” under each executive’s name. Even Facebook, which many would assume is a Democrat-leaning firm, is rumored to have rented blocks of unused rooms at Trump International Hotel in DC in a possible attempt to curry favor with the Trump administration. As the Intercept reported in October, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Penn) asked Mark Zuckerberg: “Is there any chance that Facebook actually books blocks of rooms at Trump International Hotel and does not use them?” Zuckerberg played dumb and promised to follow up. There is also the issue of Trump’s official presidential visits to his own properties at taxpayer expense. According to a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, as of August 2019 Trump had made 362 such excursions. Adding in some 250 other administration officials such as White House staff, Cabinet members, and agency employees, the Trump administration had made 630 visits to Trump properties. From these scraps, we get a sense of what subpoenas might have dredged up.