; Whereas, at the January 11, 2017, press conference, President-elect Trump’s lawyer implied that the only reason people have raised the Emoluments Clause is over routine business transactions like paying for hotel rooms and claimed that [p]aying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office. It’s not an emolument. ; Whereas a comprehensive study of the Emoluments Clause written by Richard Painter, Norman Eisen, and Lawrence Tribe, two of whom are former ethics counsels to past Presidents, has concluded that since emoluments are properly defined as including profit from any employment, as well as salary, it is clear that even remuneration fairly earned in commerce can qualify ; Whereas numerous legal and constitutional experts, including several former White House ethics counsels, have also made clear that the arrangement announced on January 11, 2017, in which the President fails to exit the ownership of his businesses through use of a blind trust or equivalent, will leave the President with a personal financial interest in businesses that collect foreign government payments and benefits, which raises both constitutional and public interest concerns; Whereas Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush have set the precedent of using true blind trusts, in which their holdings were liquidated and placed in new investments unknown to them by an independent trustee who managed them free of familial bias; Whereas the continued intermingling of the business of the Trump Organization and the work of government has the potential to constitute the foreign corruption so feared by the Founding Fathers and to betray the trust of America’s citizens; Whereas, on January 20, 2017, President Trump swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, the rights, privileges and limitations of which are defined and guarded by the Federal judiciary of the United States