government and private financial business of the trump family over and over and over again with mr. trump violating the constitution to take foreign government payments. yesterday his wife filing a legal pleading saying she lost a once in a lifetime opportunity to capitalize financially on being first lady. it s very the attack on a business, american business, not just by mr. trump in his tweets, by mr. spicer yesterday claiming. and the business denies this, claiming it was political. the business says no, her line wasn t selling. th i like the behavior of a corrupt mafia family. norm and not the behavior of what we expect from the white house. norm, any reason to think that this congress would take action, the ethics committee, perhaps?
judicial branch is willing to stand up to him. we ve seen it in his muslim ban case, by the way, everything has that mie yaz ma of scandal about it in the muslim ban, there were issues about whether he spared the countries where he has business ties. painter and i wrote in the times about that, ultimately the judicial branch is going to be holding him accountable and professor painter, myself, crew, the organization we lead has brought a lawsuit to do just that, saying he can t accept these foreign government and we re going to seek discovery in the court allows it and we re going to try to get those tax returns in order to establish these foreign government payments. they re against the constitution. so it s up to the courts and the state ags have a big role to play as we ve seen in the immigration litigation. richard painter, just to clarify, i heard norm s legal plan there, but what gives crews
your saesht associates have standing as plaintiffs? yes, and i think we do have standing. the group, citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington has been focusing on corruption for a long time. we have spent a lot of time and money addressing the campaign finance connection. corruption. the revolving door. the goldman sachs goes to washington phenomenon. lobbyists and the rest of it. and now we are confronted with this new avenue of corruption, one anticipated by the founders, but we ve not had a serious problem with foreign government payments to u.s. government officials for a very long time. and now we have to confront it and we have a president who is not willing to assure us even that russia has not put russian government money into his business enterprises. he has given us no assurances whatsoever about emoluments, this is something we have been spending a lot of time and money looking at it. we feel a judge needs to look at it now.
yes, we do, tucker. president trump has businesses across united states and around the world that are steadilyes doing business with foreign government. he has foreign government in addition to the business in the hotels, foreign government tenants in the trump tower. he has huge loans with the bank of china. he has a whole variety of these guys. tucker: unprecedented influence? how are they influencing? where is the evidence? the founders don t require an influence. tucker: but you are claiming that. when that you are receiving, that s the whole rationale. why is it that the founders were so concerned about the effect of these foreign government payments and other benefits that they wrote it into the constitution? tucker: for obvious reasons. i m glad they did. if you were receivingng
injury from some kind for this case to move forward and for your associations to have standing as plaintiffs? yes, and i think we do have standing. the group, citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington has been focusing on corruption for a long time. we have spent a lot of time and money addressing the campaign finance connection. the lobbyists and the rest of it and now we are confronted with this new avenue of corruption, one anticipated by the founders, but we ve not had a serious problem with foreign government payments to u.s. government officials for a very long time. and now we have to confront it and we have a president who is not willing to assure us even that russia has not put russian government money into his business enterprises. he has given us no assurances whatsoever about emoluments,