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1/ The Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund that acts as an arm of the Qatari government, has been renting space in Donald Trump’s most valuable property. But thanks to loopholes in federal disclosure laws, the deal has remained a secret. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623950/white-house-inc-by-dan-alexander/
2/ It appears to be just the sort of arrangement the founding fathers feared. A foreign government, it seems, has been paying the president of the United States for more than a year. Undetected. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/how-everyone-is-quietly-lining-trumps-pockets
3/ I first stumbled upon it when I found a document that listed the tenants in 555 California Street, a San Francisco skyscraper that happens to be Trump's most valuable holding. You can see a snippet of the document here.
4/ Since I had never heard of the arrangement, I wasn’t sure if it was true at first. The website for the Qatar Investment Authority’s listed an office in New York, but not one in San Francisco. So I booked a trip to California to see.
5/ When I got to the building, security was tight. Guards watch over the elevator banks. They had a directory on the first floor, but it skipped straight from “Private Wealth Management” to “Quijada Realty Group,” with no mention of the Qatar Investment Authority.
6/ To get upstairs, I reserved a desk in a coworking space that happened to share an elevator bank with the Qatar Investment Authority.
7/ The security guards waved me through, and I rode to the 43rd floor of the building. I walked off the elevator, and there it was. A beautiful, spotless office for the Qatar Investment Authority.
8/ The strange thing, though, was that no one was there. It looked like no one had ever stepped foot in it. On the welcome desk, there was a plant. It looked like it died long ago.
9/ I knocked on the glass doors -- hard -- but no one answered. The next day, I went back at a different time of day, thinking that maybe the office had unusual hours. No sign of life the second time either.
10/ To try to make sense of it all, I reached out to someone who worked in the skyscraper. He told me he that, after the construction workers finished building out the office, he never once saw someone in the Qatari space. Here are a few of his messages.
11/ Why does this all matter? The Constitution. The emoluments clause prohibits officials from accepting "any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state" without getting approval from Congress.
12/ Trump’s lawyers have previously said that the president is not violating the constitution when foreign governments visit his hotels because it’s a “value-for-value exchange.” They pay money, they get a hotel room.
13/ That argument falls apart here. The Qataris are apparently paying Trump. But in return, what are they getting? An empty office with a dead plant on the counter and not a soul in sight. This doesn't look like a normal business transaction.
14/ And it's just one of the many potential conflicts in Trump's portfolio. For more of the story, check out my book, White House Inc., which comes out on Tuesday. Or read an excerpt published today in @VanityFair. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/how-everyone-is-quietly-lining-trumps-pockets
