Untitled episode

let's bring in ABC News contributing political correspondent Rachel bade for more on this Rachel Eric Trump says the company doesn't have the ability to stop someone from booking rooms through third parties and he also says Trump voluntarily donated to the treasury Department to offset his business earnings from foreign entities so what do Democrats say is the problem here well look they say it's a misleading statement

I mean the Trump organization said that in 2018 they donated something like $150,000 worth of what they called foreign profits that uh Trump had made uh from foreign entities staying at Trump at Trump hotels uh but ethics Watchdog experts say that the reality is that it's probably much more than that and I mean here Jamie Rasin uh house Democrats on the oversight committee have released a

report counting almost $8 million uh and that's just potentially a fraction of how much money he was able to make while uh he was President I mean here if you think about you know all the times that people stayed at Trump Hotel I mean we can think about Republicans who actually stayed at Trump hotels uh because they wanted to Curry favor with Donald Trump you remember

that Donald Trump uh at one point when he was president said he wanted to have the G7 International Conference at one of his uh Resorts there and handed up canceling it because Republicans pressured him not to he also uh we saw reports that he pressured Mike Pence his vice president to stay at his own uh Hotel while traveling abroad for you know business and so you

know Democrats say goes against the emoluments clause and you're not supposed to profit off the Oval Office and yet Trump was able to very much line uh his pockets while he was uh president so why didn't Democrats impeach Trump over this when he was in office it's a good question and it's not for lack of trying Diane the author of this report Jamie Raskin this was

his uh top issue when Democrats controlled the house and Donald Trump was in the white house he actually wrote a report that he wanted to release on this a long time ago uh he wanted to attach it to the the first Trump impeachment articles uh and he had begged Nancy Pelosi to let him do this Nancy Pelosi told him no she was actually concerned that Democrats

would look overly aggressive if they try to investigate all these different things uh that Donald Trump was accused of including uh potential iments violations and so she told him no that they never took a vote on this as house Democrats they never had a hearing or they scheduled a hearing but poosi made them cancel it uh and Jamie Raskin at one point was even told that

if he doesn't stop talking about this that won't pick him to be an impeachment manager in the Senate during the uh impeachment uh of Donald Trump the first one so uh it clearly they didn't want to draw attention to it but now Jamie Raskin is seeing that this could be potentially advantageous for Democrats if they show and they are able to show right here concrete evidence

uh where Trump's business was able to profit uh from foreign entities they can use that as a comparison to House Republicans are trying to accuse the Biden White House of doing and yet have not uncovered any of evidence that Joe Biden himself has profited from uh his son's business with foreign entities interesting so let's let's talk about that because House Republicans are moving forward with their

impeachment inquiry into President Biden and they're focusing on foreign payments made to his son Hunter Biden but they still haven't provided evidence of wrongdoing by the president so what's the latest on that I mean look they're trying and they know the time uh is running out the clock is ticking Republicans want to make a decision by the end of the month about whether or not they're

going to move forward with impeachment uh with for President Joe Biden but look as you said they don't have a direct link right now they are able to show that you know Hunter Biden did make a lot of this money from foreign entities uh and that has obviously raised a lot of Ethics questions about you know whether he was trading off the Biden name uh but

that's the son they still have to connect it to the Father the man uh who's in the Oval Office right now is ruling you know the all of the free world and they haven't able they have not been able to do that so uh they're in a real conundrum right now and I think Democrats report just very much underscores the lack of evidence that Republicans have

right now and that's exactly what Democrats uh want to do in this moment right now all right contributing political correspondent Rachel bade thank you hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download

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