Trump says his glorious Doral golf dump HAS NO BEDBUGS. Well all right then.

The president would like to make one thing clear: The Trump National hotel in Doral, Fla. — which he’s pushing as the site for next year’s G-7 meeting — does not have bed bugs.

“No bedbugs at Doral,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “The Radical Left Democrats, upon hearing that the perfectly located (for the next G-7) Doral National MIAMI was under consideration for the next G-7, spread that false and nasty rumor.”

Not a rumor so much as a widely-reported news item.

The “nasty rumor” to which he refers stems from a 2016 lawsuit brought by Eric Linder, a New Jersey man who claimed his

The emoluments case is going ahead.

A U.S. district court judge has now ruled that discovery can proceed in a lawsuit that the attorneys general of Maryland and the District have filed against Trump. The president had tried to stall the lawsuit, but failed.

This discovery process will now entail an effort to peer into the finances of the Trump International Hotel in D.C., which has become a magnet for spending by foreign governments and dignitaries. The lawsuit alleges that by profiting in this way, Trump — who declined to divest himself of his business holdings as president — is violating the emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from taking such benefits from foreign (or state) governments unless Congress

Then there’s that lawsuit filed today by the AGs of Maryland and DC:

The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia have announced they’ve filed suit against President Donald Trump, alleging he violated the Constitution by retaining ties to a sprawling global business empire.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh made the announcement at a jointly held news conference in Washington, confirming the suit has been filed in federal court in Maryland. Frosh and Racine cited Trump’s leases, properties and other business “entanglements” around the world as the reason for the suit, saying those posed a conflict of interest under a clause of the Constitution.

“The president’s conflicts of interest

NPR reports on that lawsuit.

A team of ethics experts and legal scholars filed a lawsuit in federal court this morning that says President Donald Trump’s overseas businesses violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars presidents from taking money from foreign governments.

The group says it is asking the court “to stop Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments” with ties to Trump interests. The lawsuit states that:

“These violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause pose a grave threat to the United States and its citizens. As the Framers were aware, private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders, and entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping,

Trump is partying up his inauguration…and he’s doing it at his hotel. That means he’s profiting while he parties, which is sleazy as fuck. Tomorrow at 12:01 Eastern it will become more than sleazy.

With sirens blaring, a fleet of limousines and security personnel raced down Pennsylvania Avenue twice in less than the last 24 hours to deliver Donald J. Trump to inauguration events.

But he was not heading to the White House. He was going to Trump International Hotel.

The hotel he leases from the federal government, and runs as a profit-making venture.

Conflicts that for months have been theoretical are now about to become real — most immediately a possible challenge by the federal government. It owns

Damn, I missed one. Too busy documenting his tweets, no doubt. Ten days ago he met with three business partners from India, who tweeted a photo of the four of them thumbs-upping.

President-elect Donald J. Trump met in the last week in his office at Trump Tower with three Indian business partners who are building a Trump-branded luxury apartment complex south of Mumbai, raising new questions about how he will separate his business dealings from the work of the government once he is in the White House.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump described the meeting as a courtesy call by the three Indian real estate executives, who flew from India to congratulate Mr. Trump on his election victory. In

The one in Turkey. There is a Trump Towers Istanbul.

Donald Trump’s company has been paid up to $10 million by the tower’s developers since 2014 to affix the Trump name atop the luxury complex, whose owner, one of Turkey’s biggest oil and media conglomerates, has become an influential megaphone for the country’s increasingly repressive regime.

That, ethics advisers said, forces the Trump complex into an unprecedented nexus: as both a potential channel for dealmakers seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House and a potential target for attacks or security risks overseas.

The president-elect’s Turkey deal marks a harrowing vulnerability that even Trump has deemed “a little conflict of interest”: a private moneymaker that could open him

The Argentina deal.

Three days after the phone call between Trump and Macri on Nov.14, Trump’s associates at Buenos Aires firm YY Development Group announced that the construction project would go ahead, in an interview with La Nación (link in Spanish). The tower’s construction had reportedly been held up for years, for various reasons, with YY Development actively restarting construction permit requests when pro-business Macri took over from statist former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Jan. 2016.

There’s nothing substantive to confirm that the phone call and construction announcement are linked, but local news media have reported that the call itself was arranged in very unusual fashion. Macri, who is son of one of Latin America’s richest

There’s a petition urging Congressional investigation of Trump’s massive conflicts of interest. It includes a useful list:

Here are the examples of potential corruption that have emerged just since Nov. 8:^7,8,9

• Trump’s children have a role in the presidential transition, despite claims that they will take over the Trump business from their father.
• Ivanka Trump attended a meeting with the Japanese prime minister and reportedly joined a phone call between her father and the president of Argentina.
• A long-stalled Trump project in Argentina mysteriously got the green light to move forward days after that phone call.
• Trump reportedly used his meeting with British politicians to push them to block offshore wind farms that he believes will sully the view

John Cassidy at the New Yorker on the elephant in the room: Trump’s conflicts of interest and his cheery refusal to do anything about them.

Last week, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization said the family was “in the process of vetting various structures,” and insisted that whatever arrangement they settled on would “comply with all applicable rules and regulations.” But this was yet another empty statement. For historical reasons, Presidents are exempted from many of the conflict-of-interest laws that apply to other federal officeholders, such as Cabinet members.

This exemption dates back to the earliest days of the Republic, when Presidents tended to be wealthy plantation owners with large holdings of land and slaves. The Founding Fathers were well

On NPR, a conversation about the conflict of interest issue. Richard Painter advised Bush Junior and Norman Eisen advised Obama.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

President-elect Donald Trump shifted positions on several issues yesterday. But in a talk with The New York Times, he avoided placing many limits on his opportunity to profit while in office.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The president-elect, who has worldwide business interests, admits that he, quote, “might have requested a business favor from visiting British politicians.” His staff had previously denied that.

INSKEEP: His staff also denied that Trump sought a business favor when talking with Argentina’s president, but his daughter Ivanka – a vice president of his company – joined that call.

His daughter was on … Read the rest