500 Nights

Late yesterday, the Washington Post broke the story that lobbyists for Saudi Arabia had paid for more than five hundred nights at Donald Trump's Washington DC hotel early last year (link here). The rooms were occupied by American military veterans who were unknowingly duped into lobbying against legislation of interest to the Saudi government being debated by Congress.

Some of the veterans, however, realized who was paying for the hotel rooms and why. "We were just used to give Trump money," said one.

Now we may know why Trump has been so reluctant to criticize Saudi Arabia despite mounting evidence the Saudi government sanctioned the brutal assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In total, the Saudi lobbyists spent more than $270,000 at Trump's hotel.

This kind of quid pro quo business in Trump properties is currently the subject of litigation now pending in federal court, with the governments of Maryland and the District of Columbia alleging that the President's profiting from foreign governments like this violates the constitution's foreign emoluments clause.

Using taxpayer funded Justice Department attorneys, Trump has battled to have the emolument suit dismissed but, to date, has failed. As the suit continues, we can expect more revelations like this that are an embarrassment to Trump.

The irony to all this is that, as a presidential candidate, Trump repeatedly denounced lobbyists for foreign governments operating in Washington. But now, he's happily accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money.