The Republicans of the Supreme Court are likely to get another chance to demonstrate their loyalty to Donald Trump, after a second federal district judge ruled against Trump in a second lawsuit centering on the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Washington, D.C., District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that congressional Democrats can go ahead with their lawsuit against Trump—a lawsuit that, if it proceeds, could shed a whole lot of light on Trump’s business and how he’s benefiting financially from other countries’ governments.
Trump’s companies—which he hasn’t separated himself from—continue to get business from foreign governments, even though the Constitution says that “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.” Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., in particular gets a lot of business from embassies and visiting foreign officials, and a federal judge in Maryland has already allowed a lawsuit arguing that this is damaging competing hotels and convention centers because Trump has an illegitimate competitive advantage. A panel of judges from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals seemed hostile to that suit, however.
Trump’s position boils down to the claim that he’s doing nothing wrong as long as he doesn’t accept outright bribes, and that booking overpriced hotel rooms and buying overpriced food don’t constitute bribes. But Sullivan ruled that this “disregards the ordinary meaning of the term as set forth in the vast majority of founding-era dictionaries; is inconsistent with the text, structure, historical interpretation, adoption, and purpose of the clause; and is contrary to executive branch practice over the course of many years.”
The Justice Department, again acting more or less as Trump’s personal lawyer, will doubtless appeal this to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the whole thing is likely to end up at the Supreme Court, to be decided in part by the justices Trump so carefully chose to give him whatever he wants.