However, while in office in 2017, he frequently held meetings with President Xi Jinping, hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and spoke of their “wonderful relationship.”
He also refused to impose sanctions on the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China — a tenant of Trump Tower in New York — even after the Justice Department filed a complaint alleging the bank was linked to a company that allegedly conspired with a North Korean bank to destroy it. The report concluded that he evaded US sanctions.
US President Donald Trump displays a chart highlighting arms sales to Saudi Arabia during a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office in 2018.credit: AP
Saudi Arabia was the second largest spender, spending more than $615,000 at Trump World Tower and the Trump International Hotel around the same time his administration signed an arms deal with the Saudi government worth more than $100 billion.
The UAE also spent tens of thousands of dollars at the Trump International Hotel in Washington during four different stays, as it pressured Trump administration officials to support the blockade of Qatar.
The names of Qatar, India and the Philippines were also mentioned in the report, which included 20 countries in total.
“These payments were made while these governments were promoting specific foreign policy objectives with the Trump administration and even, at times, with President Trump himself, and while requesting specific actions from the United States to advance their own national policy objectives.” The report says.
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The properties in the report represent only a small portion of the companies Trump owns around the world, and the payments represent only two years of Trump's four-year presidency.
But the findings nonetheless paint a picture of the kind of behavior that Republicans on the same House Oversight Committee accuse Biden and his family of engaging in, as they conduct an impeachment inquiry into the president.
That investigation identified questionable foreign business dealings and influence peddling by Biden's son Hunter while Biden was vice president, but has yet to find clear evidence of corruption or profiteering by the president.
Trump and his campaign have not yet responded to these allegations. Instead, the former president spent the morning filing a motion with the court against Special Counsel Jack Smith (whom he is prosecuting for his handling of classified documents and his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election); Retweeting sexually charged posts by New Yorker writer E. Jean Carroll (who is on trial again this month for defamation) and running attack ads against his Republican rivals (former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis).
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The motion against Smith accuses him of contempt of court for continuing to file court documents after a judge ordered the case temporarily halted. The order to temporarily suspend, or “stay,” was issued because Trump is currently seeking immunity from prosecution.
“Smith is ordered to take no further action in the lower court until the presidential immunity issue is resolved, which should represent a complete dismissal of this 'case' because President Trump was doing his duty as head of the investigation into the fraudulent and stolen 2020 case.” “The presidential election,” campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung said in a statement.
