A civil case being pursued by the attorney general for the District of Columbia has brought renewed attention to what limits there should be on a president’s ability to profit from the office.
WASHINGTON — It was a month before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, and one of his aides had a delicate question: Wasn’t there going to be a backlash when it became known that the inauguration had spent donors’ money at Mr. Trump’s hotel in Washington, even though other places would cost much less or even be free?
“These are events in P.E.’s honor at his hotel, and one of them is with and for family and close friends,” Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, then an event planner for Mr. Trump, wrote in an email to a colleague in December 2016, referring to Mr. Trump as the president-elect and saying she raised the issue to “express my concern.”
As Mr. Trump’s presidency comes to a close, expenditures like those are receiving renewed legal scrutiny in the form of a civil case being pursued by the attorney general for the District of Columbia. Continue reading.