MANHATTAN (CN) — For the first time in U.S. history, ordinary citizens fought in court Wednesday to have a president’s business dealings declared as violations of anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution.
“Diplomats are bragging that they’re going to this president’s hotel to curry favor with him,” attorney Deepak Gupta argued this morning in the unprecedented hearing.
Giving no indication of how he would decide this groundbreaking issue, U.S. District Judge George Daniels vigorously put both parties on the defensive with a series of sharp questions during 2 1/2 hours of arguments.
“You both are in uncharted waters,” Daniels said at one point.
On Trump's side, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate insisted that the federal judiciary has no role in enforcing the previously obscure clauses.
“The court lacks jurisdiction to issue an injunction against a sitting president of the United States,” Shumate said in court Wednesday.
Blasting this as an “extreme view,” Gupta described this interpretation of the separation of powers as a recipe for impunity.
“I want to address the government’s view that the president is above the law,” said Gupta, an attorney with the firm Gupta Wessler.
To earn the right to take the president to court, Gupta will have to prove not only that the president’s business dealings are illegal, but that his clients have been harmed by them.
For lead plaintiff CREW, a group dedicated to rooting out conflicts of interest in government, the task of keeping tabs on Trump’s global business empires has required constant vigilance.
Gupta’s other clients in the hotel and restaurant industry meanwhile have been put in the position of competing directly with the president.
Hotel booker Jill Phaneuf, who works for the Kimpton Carlyle Hotel and the Kimpton Glover Park Hotel on Washington’s Embassy Row, alleges that the diplomats among her clientele are more likely to turn to the Trump International Hotel.
If the case goes to trial, Gupta promised, the court would see that Trump’s Washington hotel charges higher rates than the competition, even while it has lower occupancy rates, to cater to an elite clientele.
“That’s because it’s an emoluments magnet,” he said.
Drafted by the Framers at the dawn of American government, the Constitution’s emoluments clause holds that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under [the United States], shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
Gupta told the court that he has numerical proof of Trump’s competition with another of his clients, New York hotel mogul Eric Goode.
Ranked 35th in the area, Trump SoHo’s price differs by only $1 from Goode’s Bowery Hotel, which outranks its nearby competitor by two points but has an important drawback.
“What our clients can’t offer is the ability to curry favor with the president of the United States,” Gupta said.
Daniels appeared skeptical that Gupta has shown enough to prove standing, the legal principle showing one has been personally affected by conduct that brought them to court.
“Why do they have that right?” Daniels pressed.