Opinion: Trump cannot keep his corruption hidden forever. Here's what's coming.

https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Trump-cannot-keep-his-corruption-hidden-forever-13107292.php



Two of the biggest stories in Washington right now - President Donald Trump's battle with lawyer Michael Cohen, and a federal judge's decision to let a lawsuit alleging ongoing violations of the Emoluments Clause proceed - are both converging towards one end point. Both demonstrate the degree to which Trump places his personal interests before those of the American people, and both may shed light on that wretched reality in much more detail in coming days than Trump ever bargained for.

Thursday morning, multiple news reports tell us that Trump's allies view future disclosures from Cohen - who released audio showing Trump was aware of a hush-money scheme to quiet an alleged mistress before the election - as a serious threat to his presidency. Meanwhile, the judge's ruling this week means the court battle over whether Trump is violating the Constitution with his business profits shifts into a new phase that could bring more revelations.

In that ruling, a federal judge denied Trump's motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., which alleges that Trump, whose businesses are regularly patronized by foreign officials, is violating the Constitution's ban on officials accepting emoluments from foreign governments (and state governments). The court rejected Trump's effort to define "emoluments" very narrowly, and instead accepted the plaintiffs' argument that they constitute "profit," "gain," or "advantage," i.e., the sort of profits that go to Trump's businesses. This means the case now moves forward to determine whether Trump reaped such profit, gain, or advantage from foreign governments.

In an interview with me, Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is involved in the lawsuit, laid out the next steps: D.C. and Maryland will now seek discovery access to the financial records of Trump's businesses - in particular, the hotel he owns in D.C. "We're going to seek records to show what benefits and payments the president got, and that's going to include extensive business and financial records," Bookbinder said.

It's possible Trump could block the discovery process, through an unusual appeal or other means. But if he fails, Bookbinder says, the discovery process could "prove that the president has been receiving payments," demonstrating this in a new level of detail documenting "foreign officials staying at the Trump hotel," which could in turn show that "the president is violating the Constitution."

The goal is to get the court to flatly declare that in accepting these payments, Trump is violating the Constitution, and even better, for the court to order Trump to stop. For instance, Trump might have to divest from his businesses (which he has refused to do), or his hotel might have to stop accepting forms of business that constitute the violation, among other possibilities. The case would probably go to the Supreme Court, and it's possible the plaintiffs could lose or only gain a partial victory, in which the courts declare that Trump is violating the Constitution without ordering an end to it. Another possibility, of course, is that Trump defies a court order to stop, which would precipitate a crisis