[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 30, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6601-S6602]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  PRESIDENT-ELECT'S BUSINESS DEALINGS

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, on another matter, I have noted for 
months, actually for years, in the lead-up to the November 8 election, 
that congressional Republicans spent millions of taxpayers' dollars to 
air their unsubstantiated concerns about corruption at the highest 
levels of our government. If they were trying to get on television 
doing it, we might want to take a look at what they said. They said the 
Clinton Foundation should be dissolved, notwithstanding the amount of 
good work it is doing around the world. Every action, every meeting, 
every activity of the Clinton Foundation should be revealed, they said. 
We cannot allow such a foundation to run so close to the Oval Office, 
they said.
  So it is ironic, sadly ironic, actually it is madly ironic, that 
since November 8, I have heard neither a shout nor a whisper from 
congressional Republicans echoing the same concerns about our 
President-elect's personal and profitable business dealings. No outrage 
that the President-elect's family may charge the American taxpayers 
millions of dollars to rent space for the Secret Service at Trump 
Tower. No demand that the President-elect--the chairman and president 
of The Trump Corporation--dissolve the interests he owns. Today we hear 
how the President-elect plans to address these conflicts of interest 
which he calls a ``visual'' problem rather than an ethical one. But 
unless he does what I and others have called for--divest his interest 
in and sever his relationship to the Trump Organization and put the 
proceeds in a true blind trust--it is nothing more than lipservice. 
Until we know more about what role his family will have, both in his 
business interests and the government's operation under a Trump 
administration, no one should consider this serious concern as 
addressed.
  And here is the duplicity of congressional Republicans' double 
standard. After years of partisan witch hunts and millions of wasted 
taxpayer dollars investigating bogus allegations against Hillary 
Clinton, and by extension the Clinton Foundation, if they fail to 
demand the same of Donald Trump that they demanded of her, they will, 
as E.J. Dionne said so eloquently in his column in the Washington Post, 
``be fully implicated in any Trump scandal that results from a shameful 
and partisan double standard.''
  Madam President, I am hearing from Vermonters. They are worried. They 
are uncertain. Some of them are scared. Congress could do a great 
service to all our constituents if it led by example, not just by 
convenient spoken platitudes that might give you a few seconds on the 
evening news. If my colleagues want to actually be the leaders that 
they claim they are, do not start by validating an offensive and 
dangerous double standard. Have the same standard for Republicans as 
you do for Democrats. You can't condemn Democrats on something but say 
it is perfectly okay if Republicans do it. It doesn't work that way.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the column from the 
Washington Post of November 27, 2016, by E.J. Dionne entitled ``An 
ethical double standard for Trump--and the GOP?'' be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2016]

           An Ethical Double Standard for Trump--and the GOP?

                          (By E.J. Dionne Jr.)

       Republicans are deeply concerned about ethics in government 
     and the vast potential for corruption stemming from conflicts 
     of interest. We know this because of the acute worries they 
     expressed over how these issues could have cast a shadow over 
     a Hillary Clinton presidency.
       ``If Hillary Clinton wins this election and they don't shut 
     down the Clinton Foundation and come clean with all of its 
     past activities, then there's no telling the kind of 
     corruption that you might see out of the Clinton White 
     House,'' Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told conservative talk show 
     host Hugh Hewitt.
       Presumably Cotton will take the lead in advising Donald 
     Trump to ``shut down'' his business activities and ``come 
     clean'' on what came before. Surely Cotton wants to be 
     consistent.
       The same must be true of Reince Priebus, the Republican 
     National Committee chair whom Trump tapped as his chief of 
     staff. ``When that 3 a.m. phone call comes, Americans deserve 
     to have a president on the line who is not compromised by 
     foreign donations,'' Priebus said earnestly in a statement on 
     Aug. 18.
       Priebus, you would think, believes this even more strongly 
     about a president whose enterprises might reap direct profits 
     for himself or members of his family from foreign businesses 
     or governments. Priebus must

[[Page S6602]]

     thus be hard at work right now on a plan for Trump to sell 
     off his assets.
       ``The deals that she and her husband were pocketing--
     hundreds of thousands of foreign money,'' Rep. Darrell Issa 
     (R-Calif.) told the Breitbart website, the right-wing outlet 
     once led by the soon-to-be White House chief strategist, 
     Stephen K. Bannon. Issa added that Clinton wanted her 
     activities ``to be behind closed doors'' and ``did that 
     because she doesn't know where the line is.''
       We can assume that Issa will press the president-elect 
     about the dangers of doing business deals ``behind closed 
     doors'' and instruct him about where the ethical ``line'' 
     should be.
       And it would be truly heartening to know that Rep. Jason 
     Chaffetz (R-Utah), a vociferous critic of the Clinton 
     Foundation (``There's a connection between what the 
     foundation is doing and what the secretary of state's office 
     is doing''), plans to apply the same benchmarks to Trump.
       After all, when the chairman of the House Oversight and 
     Government Reform Committee was asked last August on CNN if 
     Trump should release his tax returns, his answer was both 
     colorful and unequivocal. ``If you're going to run and try to 
     become the president of the United States,'' Chaffetz 
     replied, ``you're going to have to open up your kimono and 
     show everything, your tax returns, your medical records. You 
     are . . . just going to have to do that.''
       I eagerly await Chaffetz's news conference reiterating his 
     kimono policy, since he made very clear that he sees his role 
     as nonpartisan. ``My job is not to be a cheerleader for the 
     president,'' he said. ``My job is to hold them accountable 
     and to provide that oversight. That's what we do.'' Early, 
     comprehensive hearings on the problems Trump's business 
     dealings would pose to his independence and trustworthiness 
     as our commander in chief would be a fine way to prove 
     Chaffetz meant this.
       Republicans did an extraordinary job raising doubts about 
     Clinton--helped, we learned courtesy of The Post, by a 
     Russian disinformation campaign. Does the GOP want to cast 
     itself as a band of hypocrites who cared not at all about 
     ethics and were simply trying to win an election?

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