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LePage's Stay in Trump Hotel May Support Emoluments Case Against the President

pbs.org
President Trump, as a candidate, shakes hands with LePage after the governor introduced him at a campaign rally in Portland in 2016

Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s decision to stay at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. last year may have helped advance a Maryland court case challenging the president’s ability to hold onto his financial stake in his business empire.

A federal judge in Maryland ruled Wednesday that the attorneys general in Maryland and D.C. have standing to pursue a case alleging that Trump’s ongoing financial ties to the Trump International Hotel In Washington, D.C. violate what’s known as the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The emoluments provision prohibits federal officials from receiving payments or other financial benefits from domestic or foreign government actors. The emoluments issue has dogged Trump since he took office in 2017; critics argue that he can profit from the presidency because those looking to win his favor may feel obliged to patron his businesses, including his hotel in D.C.

LePage is being used to bolster that argument in the Maryland case.

In attempting to persuade the Maryland judge that they have standing to pursue the emoluments case, the D.C. and Maryland AGs cited LePage’s stay at the Trump International Hotel last spring.

Shortly thereafter, the governor appeared alongside President Trump at a news conference in which the president signed an executive order reviewing recently designated national monuments. One of the monuments, Katahdin Woods and Waters, was fiercely opposed by LePage before its designation by President Obama in 2016.

Plaintiffs in the Maryland case argued that LePage’s patronage indicates that state officials may feel compelled to stay at Trump’s hotel and that the president’s financial stake in the hotel has disadvantaged other hotels and businesses in the D.C. area.

The plaintiffs arguments regarding LePage was cited in U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte’s ruling released Wednesday.

“Leaving aside how Maine’s citizens may have felt about the propriety of their Governor living large at the Hotel while on official business in Washington,” he wrote, “the fact that States other than Maryland or the District of Columbia (while, not a State) might patronize the Hotel while on official business in Washington rather clearly suggests that Maryland and the District of Columbia may very well feel themselves obliged, i.e., coerced, to patronize the Hotel in order to help them obtain federal favors.”

He added, “Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that the President is violating the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution by reason of his involvement with and receipt of benefits from the Trump International Hotel and its appurtenances in Washington, D.C. as well as the operations of the Trump Organization with respect to the same,” Messsitte wrote.

LePage’s patronage at Trump’s D.C. hotel was confirmed last year when the Portland Press Herald obtained travel receipts from the governor’s office and his security detail. The governor has not fully complied with the paper’s public records request.

Messitte’s ruling is a small step in the emoluments case, but so far it is advancing further than similar cases introduced in other states.

Responding to television station WGME after airtime, LePage called the judge an “absolute imbecile.”

“I didn’t realize I could buy the president so cheap, a night in his hotel and he’s in my back pocket,” LePage said. “That’s all I’m gonna say. The judge that did that is imbecile. He’s a complete imbecile. That’s all. I can tell you any district court judge, whether it’s state or federal, puts that in the paper because stayed in the hotel is an absolute imbecile. I hope it goes national. I hope he hears it because he’s an absolute imbecile.”

This post was updated at 8:37 p.m.

Journalist Steve Mistler is Maine Public’s chief politics and government correspondent. He is based at the State House.