There are now reports that Maria Corina Machado plans to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize as a bribe for being installed as leader of Venezuela. Putting aside the fact that we seem to be living in a joke without a good punchline, it is worth noting that the gift would violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
Yeah, I know, so did Trump's acceptance of the FIFA Participation Award Peace Prize, and so will Trump's acceptance of the Qatari plane (assuming he does follow through with his plans to take it home with him when he leaves office rather than letting the U.S. government keep it), and so did countless other gifts Trump has accepted from foreigners throughout the last year. The Trump Presidency has been an endless stream of Emolument Clause violations.
Since the Supreme Court effectively dismissed the first term Emolument cases against Trump in 2021, in the second term everyone seems to pretend that means that the Emoluments Clause doesn't exist anymore. That unspoken consensus has only resulted in even more brazen Emolument violations by Trump in this term. Remember, the first term violations were mostly about whether payments by foreign nationals to Trump's DC Hotel, which ultimately profited Trump, meant he was accepting payments from foreigners. Now he is just openly taking bribes. I'm not sure why no one is bringing Emoluments lawsuits against Trump anymore. If we had a real Court system these should be slam-dunk cases.
But I'm hoping that whatever comes after Trump would include an effort to enforce the Emoluments clause by having the U.S. Justice Department seize anything that Trump got in violation of the clause on behalf of the federal government. I really wish someone with Presidential aspirations would say out loud that, if elected, every bribe that Trump has personally received will be clawed back from Trump or his heirs by the next administration.
