A team of prominent constitutional scholars, Supreme Court litigators and former White House ethics lawyers intends to file a lawsuit Monday morning alleging that President Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his hotels and other business operations to accept payments from foreign governments.
The lawsuit is among a barrage of legal actions against the Trump administration that have been initiated or are being planned by major liberal advocacy organizations. Such suits are among the few outlets they have to challenge the administration now that Republicans are in control of the government.
The legal team filing the lawsuit includes Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard constitutional scholar; Norman L. Eisen, an Obama administration ethics lawyer; and Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. Among the others are Richard W. Painter, an ethics counsel in the administration of George W. Bush; Mr. Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator who has three cases pending before the court; and Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University law professor and former congressional candidate who has been studying and writing about the Emoluments Clause for nearly a decade.
Forbes notes that Eisen attempted to justify the suit in a December white paper for the Brookings Institution, where is is a Fellow in Governance Studies.
He previously served as US Ambassador to the Czech Republic in the Obama Administration, and before that was Special Counsel to the President and Special Assistant to the President.
In 2001 Eisen co-founded Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a government watchdog group.
Brookings is expected to be one of the biggest attack dogs when it comes to fighting Mr. Trump, and has recently been touted as a sanctuary think tank for liberals.
