The State Department could not compile a list of gifts for 2020, making it difficult to determine whether officials did anything improper.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India with President Donald J. Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, in 2020. Mr. Trump received a spinning wheel and other gifts on the trip.
The Trump administration left office without providing the State Department with an accounting of the gifts former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials received from foreign governments in 2020, the department disclosed late Friday.
The department said that as a result, it could not fully account for the gifts officials received, the latest example to emerge in recent months of how the Trump administration’s flouting of laws and norms about the day-to-day operations of government now makes it harder to determine whether anything improper took place.
“It’s flagrant and it looks terrible,” said Richard W. Painter, the former top ethics lawyer for George W. Bush’s administration. “Either it was really stupid or really corrupt.”
Under federal law, each government department and agency is legally required to submit a list to the State Department of gifts over $415 its officials received from foreign governments. The measure is intended to ensure that foreign governments do not gain undue influence over American officials.
Departing White Houses typically provide the State Department with a list of the gifts officials receive before, or shortly after, they leave office to ensure they have followed the law.
But in the list of gifts for 2020 that the State Department released on Friday, there are no gifts for any White House officials. Although the pandemic curtailed some of Mr. Trump’s travel, Mr. Trump went to Switzerland and India — where he received gifts, including a bust of Gandhi, a sculpture of Gandhi’s famous “three monkeys” metaphor and a spinning wheel. Top foreign leaders for at least a dozen countries visited the White House.
In a highly unusual disclosure, the department said that its Office of the Chief of Protocol, which was run by a Trump appointee until Jan. 20, 2021, had failed before Mr. Trump left office to ask the White House for a list of the gifts it received, and that Mr. Trump’s White House left office without providing one.
The department said it had tried to collect the information about the gifts Trump White House officials had received but had failed to come up with an accounting.
“As a result, the data required to fully compile a complete listing for 2020 is unavailable,” the State Department said in a footnote to its list of gifts government officials received that year.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.
In February, it was revealed that classified documents and gifts from the White House had been improperly taken to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a matter federal authorities are now in the preliminary stages of investigating. Around that time, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol learned that significant chunks of time were missing from White House call records from the day of the attack.
The ethics expert, Mr. Painter, said that by failing to disclose the gifts, the Trump White House violated the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution, which makes it illegal to take gifts from foreigners without permission from Congress. But Mr. Painter said that because the emoluments clause is toothless and has no criminal or civil penalties, it is extremely difficult to hold a former official accountable.
Even before the latest disclosure, the Trump administration had a history of sloppy record keeping and poor oversight of gifts given to and received by administration officials from foreign leaders.
The State Department’s inspector general reported in November that tens of thousands of dollars in gifts given to Trump administration officials were missing. They included a 30-year-old Suntory Hibiki bottle of Japanese whiskey given to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, worth $5,800, and a 22-karat-gold commemorative coin valued at $560 given to another State Department official.
The inspector general also found that monogrammed commemorative pewter trays, marble trinket boxes and leather portfolios made with department funds to give to foreign leaders at the Group of 7 summit in 2020 that was canceled because of the pandemic were missing.
The New York Times reported in October that Trump administration officials had held onto white tiger and cheetah furs the Saudi government had given to the White House on a 2017 trip to the kingdom, even though the Endangered Species Act made possession of them illegal. When the furs were ultimately handed over to the Interior Department, tests revealed that they were fake.
The Times also reported that government officials had questions about whether Mr. Pence’s wife, Karen Pence, wrongly took two gold-toned place card holders from the prime minister of Singapore without paying for them. The Trump administration, The Times reported, also failed to disclose that Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, had been given two swords and a dagger from the Saudis. A month after Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Kushner paid $47,920 for them along with three other gifts.
Matthew Cullen contributed research.
Source: nytimes.com
