U.S. President Donald Trump decided on Thursday to host the G7 meeting in June at his National Resort, near Miami, Florida, according to Mick Mulvani. The acting White House chief of staff raised immediate questions about whether there was a conflict of interest for the president to choose one of his own assets for an international diplomatic meeting.
Mulvani said the president had considered the possibility of facing "some kind of political criticism" when he chose the resort, pointing to Trump´s choice anyway because administration officials evaluated hotels available across the country and concluded that Trump National Doral was "the best facility ever established." To host this meeting. "
"It seems as if they have built this facility to host this kind of event," Mulvani told reporters, quoting an unnamed official during the planning process, rejecting any indication that the president would profit financially from this choice.
The hotel will host the summit "at a cost," Mulvani said.
But Democratic lawmakers said the president´s choice of hotel was the latest example of Trump´s use of office to promote his business interests. "The administration´s announcement that President Trump´s Doral Miami Resort will be the site of the upcoming G-7 summit is among the most blatant examples of the president´s corruption so far," said Rep. Gerold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee charged with drafting the president´s accountability clauses. .
Nadler explained that Trump "exploits his position and makes official decisions on behalf of the US government for personal financial gain," stressing that "reward clauses of the Constitution exist to prevent this type of corruption exactly."
He added that the committee will continue to "press for answers to our previous requests on the process of choosing a meeting place for the G7."
In turn, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Trump violates established laws aimed at protecting against foreign influence, while legal experts confirmed that hosting the G-7 summit in "Doral" may violate the Constitution in two ways. First, the Constitution prohibits the president from accepting gifts or payments From a foreign government source, which is technically called a foreign bonus, and secondly, the president is prohibited from taking any kind of payment from the federal government beyond his salary.
Deepak Gupta, a constitutional lawyer who is already involved in two cases in which Trump is accused of violating the constitution by accepting payments from foreign governments at his hotels, said the summit there would effectively force government officials to pay the Trump family fees for staying at his resort.
The Constitution also forbids this under the "profiteering from office" or "imoloment clause", which is constantly being raised in Washington because the president profited from using his most prosperous hotel in the US capital, Hotel Trump, because foreign officials stayed at the hotel. At fictional prices to please Trump, especially visitors from Arab oil countries.
The "prohibition on profiting from office" stipulates in the Constitution that a breach by any US official is a motive for initiating an investigation into the dismissal.
