Democrats Are Investigating Trump On Missing Foreign Officials' Gifts

The House Oversight Committee Democrats have launched an investigation into former President Donald Trump for his administration’s failure to properly record gifts he received from foreign officials while in office.

The committee said it received information from the U.S. State Department that the Trump administration may not have logged at least thousands of dollars worth of items he received from foreign sources during his tenure. In addition, the state department was also unable to trace the government officials who also received foreign gifts during the Trump administration.

“As a result, the foreign sources and monetary value of gifts President Trump received remain unknown,” House Democrats said in a letter sent to the National Archives and Records Administration. “These revelations raise concerns about the potential for undue influence over former President Trump by foreign governments, which may have put the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States at risk.”

Under the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, the president and any other U.S. official are required to turn over any gifts deemed to be worth over $415. The General Services Administration (GSA) is responsible for collecting foreign gifts given to the president and their family members.

The Oversight Committee is now requesting information from the National Archives about the gifts that Trump and his family received from foreign sources during his term.

The request from the House Oversight Committee comes after The New York Times in April detailed how the State Department was having difficulties tracking the gifts that the former president and members of the Trump administration, including former Vice President Mike Pence, received during their final full year in office.

In the letter, House Democrats detailed several of the gifts missing from the logs, including a bust of Mahatma Gandhi, a marble sculpture of Gandhi’s “three monkeys” metaphor and a spinning wheel — gifts Trump received in his travels to Switzerland and India, both of which were covered in media reports. A $5,800 bottle of whiskey that Japan gifted to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a 22-karat gold commemorative coin given to another state official were also missing from the records.