The week just gets better and better [The Hill] A federal appeals court in Washington threw out a lawsuit accusing President Trump of illegally profiting off his private businesses while in office, ruling that the Democratic lawmakers who brought the suit lack standing to sue.
A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday said in a brief 12-page decision that the dispute centering around the Constitution's emoluments clauses has no place in the court system.
"The Members can, and likely will, continue to use their weighty voices to make their case to the American people, their colleagues in the Congress and the President himself, all of whom are free to engage that argument as they see fit," the judges wrote. "But we will not‐indeed we cannot‐participate in this debate."
The decision is a major win for Trump, who unlike every recent president, has refused to relinquish control over his business assets by placing them in a blind trust.
The case was brought in 2017 by more than 200 Democratic senators and House members who alleged that Trump's business holdings violated the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign countries.
Their lawsuit argued that foreign diplomats' patronage of the president's hotels opens Trump up to the kind of foreign influence that the framers had sought to avoid.
The unanimous D.C. Circuit panel said in its decision that the members lacked standing because they did not comprise a majority of either the Senate or House when they filed the lawsuit and therefore did not represent either chamber.