Did George Washington Take ‘Emoluments’? He asked a British official to help find renters for his land. By Eugene Kontorovich
https://www.wsj.com/articles/did-george-washington-take-emoluments-1492123033
Much has been made of Donald Trump’s decision to retain ownership of his businesses during his presidency. Earlier this year a group of law professors and prominent attorneys filed a lawsuit in New York federal court that called into question the constitutionality of this decision. The suit argues that the Trump Organization’s hotel rentals to a Chinese state-owned bank—along with royalties on “The Apprentice” from state television in countries such as Vietnam—violate the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.
Mr. Trump is not the first president to have business dealings with foreigners. That was actually George Washington, whose conduct in office has been a model for every president.
By the 1790s, Washington was wealthy primarily because of real estate—renting and selling his vast holdings. When Washington became president he did not sell his farm and estates. Rather, his nephew George Augustine Washington managed them while Washington remained involved. As with Mr. Trump’s hotels, Washington’s renters or purchasers could include foreigners.
The president received constant reports from his nephew and subsequent managers and wrote to them weekly. His letters could run 10 pages, with granular instructions on what to buy, sell and plant. This wasn’t an anomaly: Thomas Jefferson, the third president, also continued to supervise his business while holding the nation’s highest office. This belies the notion that the Constitution limits a president’s management of, or benefit from, his existing business ventures.
The new view of the Emoluments Clause advanced against Mr. Trump is that any pecuniary advantage constitutes a forbidden “emolument.” That would mean Washington and Jefferson would have had to ensure that no U.S. or foreign official stood on the other side of any transaction. Yet neither president, despite their close supervision, appears to have taken any such steps to curtail who they did business with.
One letter written by Washington deserves great attention in the current debate. On Dec. 12, 1793, Washington wrote to Arthur Young, an officer of the U.K. Board of Agriculture, an entity newly created and funded by Parliament at the initiative of William Pitt. The president asked for Young’s help in renting out his Mount Vernon lands to secure an income for his retirement. Not finding customers in America, he wondered if Young, with his agricultural connections, could find and organize some would-be farmers in his home country and send them over.
Washington noted that the land would surely increase in value because of its close proximity to what would become the nation’s capital in 1800. Large public-works projects were taking place—a circumstance over which he had some control.
Such a direct business solicitation of a foreigner with foreign government ties would surely lead to cries of constitutional breach if Mr. Trump did it. But the emoluments restriction only applies to benefits from “foreign states,” and what entities count as parts of a “foreign state” for these purposes remains fuzzy. CONTINUE AT SITE
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