Tipsheet

Democrat Attempts to Link Trump To Foreign Influence, But There's One Major Problem

House Democrats are pulling out all the stops to keep former President Trump from securing the 2024 GOP nominee. 

This week, House Oversight Committee Democrats released a report that attempted to tie Trump to a foreign influence scheme. However, they are missing a big piece of their accusations. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, published a report claiming Trump received $7.8 million from foreign sources, including 20 foreign governments and their subsidiaries during the first two years of his presidency. The listed amount is about $15 million less than the Biden family made during his time as vice president. 

The report claims Trump received payments from China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia. 

"President Trump's businesses received, at a minimum, $7.8 million in foreign payments from at least 20 countries during his presidency. These included payments from foreign governments and foreign government-owned or -controlled entities to properties owned by Donald Trump," the report reads. 

A significant portion of that money came from one business that rented office space in the Trump Tower beginning in 2008 and concluded its partnership in 2019. 

Bank statements show that $5.5 million was paid to Trump-owned properties from the Chinese government and state-owned enterprises. The committee estimates that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China paid Trump-owned properties $5.3 million between February 2017 and October 2019.

Raskin is accusing House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) of colluding with Trump's attorneys to block the committee from obtaining records about Trump's foreign payments.

"While the figures and constitutional violations in this report are shocking, we still don't know the extent of the foreign payments that Donald Trump received —or even the total number of countries that paid him and his businesses while he was President—because Committee Chairman James Comer and House Republicans buried any further evidence of the Trump family's staggering corruption," Raskin said. 

In response, Comer criticized Democrat's ploy to bring Trump down as President Joe Biden faces a GOP-led impeachment inquiry. 

"It's beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump. Former President Trump has legitimate businesses, but the Bidens do not. The Bidens and their associates made over $24 million by cashing in on the Biden name in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania. No goods or services were provided other than access to Joe Biden and the Biden network," Comer told the Daily Caller. 

Nine countries in the report paid less than $10,000 to Trump businesses. Cyprus, one of the countries cited, paid just $590 to the former president. 

Meanwhile, the Biden family received over $24 million from foreign countries such as Ukraine, Russia, China, Romania and Kazakhstan. 

"Democrats like Jamie Raskin are trying to deflect from the fact that the Biden family bagged at least $30 million from foreign individuals linked to the highest levels of the Chinese military and intelligence apparatus—perhaps the greatest presidential scandal in American history," Seamus Bruner, director of research at the Government Accountability Institute told the outlet.