The former U.S. president Donald Trump has not reported more than 100 gifts given to him and his family during his office, according to Congressional Democrats.
In a new report, House Democrats say that the Trump Administration's failure to disclose the items raises questions about whether foreign governments could have used these gifts to influence U.S. policy while Trump was in office.
The report said that the White House, under the Trump administration, failed to document more than 100 gifts valued at more than $250,000, including about $48,000 from Saudi Arabia that had been given to Trump, his wife Melania, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump.
The panel has reported that Kushner, his wife, Ivanka Trump, and their children received 33 unreported gifts, totaling nearly $82,000.
The missing items included a $3,040 driver and $460 putter given to Trump by Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan at the time. Abe also gave additional golf clubs to Trump during visits to the Trump International Golf Club and Kasumigaseki Country Club in 2017 and 2018, which is not documented.
A larger-than-life-sized painting of Trump given to him by El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, is also missing from the list. The internal committee has reported that it obtained internal White House communications about shipping the painting from the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador to the U.S. but found no records of the painting's disposition. The Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act prohibits a president and federal officials from keeping foreign gifts exceeding the minimal value, currently set at $415, according to the interim staff report.
The law also has a system in place for how information about foreign gifts gets publicly disclosed, and allows recipients of items valued over the fixed dollar amount to have the option of purchasing and retaining them.
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin D-MD, told CNN that these items were never reported as serious violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. The part of the Constitution is America's original anti-bribery law, according to Raskin.
He said that lawmakers could make criminal referrals if the evidence warrants doing so.