A liberal watchdog group plans to file a lawsuit Monday arguing that President Donald Trump is violating the Constitution's ban on officials accepting benefits from foreign governments.
The suit will claim that Trump's business dealings with foreign countries who rent space in his buildings or lend money to his real estate ventures run afoul of the foreign emoluments clause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a statement Sunday evening.
"President Trump has made his slogan ‘America First,’” CREW's Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “So you would think he would want to strictly follow the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, since it was written to ensure our government officials are thinking of Americans first, and not foreign governments.”
Several prominent constitutional scholars were involved in drafting the suit, including Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, University of California-Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chermerinsky and New York University law professor Zephyr Teachout, as well as Supreme Court litigator Deepak Gupta.
