Ethics Experts Just Filed a Lawsuit Accusing Trump of Violating the Constitution

It probably won’t be the last.

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Donald Trump brought many conflicts of interest with him when he moved into the White House last week. Chief among them are the Trump Organization’s dealings with foreign power and players, including leasing office space to one Chinese state-owned bank and borrowing money from another. According to ethics experts, these ties and others violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving financial benefits from foreign governments. On Monday, a group of prominent ethics experts—including the former ethics attorneys for George W. Bush and Barack Obama—filed suit against Trump on constitutional grounds. 

The lawsuit, which you can read in full below, faces several tough challenges—notably, whether or not the plaintiffs have legal standing to make their case.

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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