Top House Democrats have accused Donald Trump of orchestrating an illegal scheme to pay himself $230m in taxpayer money, demanding he immediately abandon claims they say violate the constitution.
The representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the House judiciary committee, and the representative Robert Garcia, ranking member of the oversight committee, sent a letter to the president on Thursday condemning his plan to use a confidential administrative process to direct treasury funds into his own pocket.
“Your plan to have your obedient underlings at the Department of Justice instruct the US Treasury to pay you, personally, hundreds of millions of dollars – especially at a time when most Americans are struggling to pay rent, put food on the table, and afford health care – is an outrageous and shocking attempt to shake down the American people,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter also comes as Democracy Forward, a leading legal advocacy group, filed a public records request on Wednesday seeking documents related to Trump’s claims for restitution over those same earlier Department of Justice cases against him.
While in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump insisted to reporters that the government owes him “a lot of money” for past justice department investigations, including the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search and the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The president claimed personal authority over the decision, saying: “It’s interesting, ’cause I’m the one that makes the decision, right?”
This week, Raskin said his staff’s analysis suggests that Trump could receive the money without immediately disclosing it.
“Our reading is that, even though this is a private settlement, it doesn’t have to be disclosed anywhere until there is an accounting of where all the money has gone at the end of the year,” Raskin said in an interview with the New Republic.
Trump is pursuing the payment through an internal DoJ administrative process that typically operates under confidentiality, according to a committee spokesperson. While any transfer would eventually appear in a later congressional report, the money could be paid out months before public disclosure.
The arrangement means Trump as president would effectively decide whether Trump as claimant receives taxpayer funds for investigations into Trump as defendant.
Justice department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin told the Guardian in a statement on Wednesday that “in any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials”.
