Trump Family Under New Investigation

Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A new report from the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Democrats shows that former President Trump and members of his family did not properly disclose more than 100 gifts that are worth close to $300,000 received from foreign governments during his presidency.

The report follows a request made by the committee to the National Archives last June in which they asked for 117 undisclosed foreign gifts that had been received by Trump, his wife and former first lady Melania Trump, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump to be identified. Some of the gifts were reportedly also received by Trump’s youngest son Barron Trump and the Kushner children.

The president and his family are only allowed to keep gifts that are worth less than $415 from foreign governments. Any gift that has a higher value can only be accepted on behalf of the United States and in those cases, they need to be publicly disclosed before being turned over to the National Archives.

However, after Trump left office, the State Department reported that there had been “missing items of a significant value.” They had further noted that the recordkeeping had also been subpar and that there was a lack of security controls in place which in large part played a role in the “loss of the gifts.”

Another report also stated that the president’s office had not provided a list of all the foreign gifts received in 2020.

According to Friday’s report, the gifts that were not reported by the Trump family included $45,000 worth of gifts from Saudi Arabia, $47,000 worth of gifts from India, and $3,400 worth of gifts from China.