WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s White House has couldn’t log in more than 100 gifts from abroad worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, and federal officials could not find a life-size painting of Trump given by the president of El Salvador or golf clubs belonging to the Japanese prime minister. according to a House Democrats report Friday.
Among the unreported items are 16 gifts from Saudi Arabia totaling more than $45,000, including a dagger valued at up to $24,000, and 17 gifts from India, including expensive cufflinks, a vase and a $4,600 mock-up of the Taj Mahal, according to the report by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
Gifts of several hundred dollars made by foreign officials to the President, Vice President and their families must be reported to the State Department under the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act. The House Democrats’ report, citing State Department records, says the number of gifts reported by Trump and his family is lower than the number reported by previous presidents.
Overall, the report said, while the White House did report a few gifts to the state between 2017 and 2019, it did not report more than 100 foreign gifts totaling over $250,000.
According to the report, federal officials have been unable to locate a life-size painting of Trump, which internal White House correspondence says was commissioned by the President of El Salvador and delivered as a gift to Trump at the US Embassy in El Salvador ahead of the 2020 US election. According to the report, the US ambassador to El Salvador alerted US officials to the gift and asked for help shipping it.
The report says that “there is no record of the painting’s disposition” by the National Archives and Records Administration or the General Services Administration, but that some records indicate it may have been moved to Florida as Trump’s property in July 2021 .
Also unaccounted for are thousands of dollars in golf clubs given to Trump in 2018 and 2019 by Shinzo Abe, then Prime Minister of Japan.
“Today’s preliminary findings point yet again to the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard for the rule of law and systematic misuse of large gifts from foreign governments, including many lavish personalized gifts that far exceed the legal value limit but have never been reported — some that still missing today,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the oversight committee, said in a statement.
He also said that the committee “will remain committed to pursuing the facts to determine the extent to which former President Trump broke the law or violated the Constitution in failing to report gifts and in taking possession of valuable items.” , without paying the fair market price for it.”
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
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Source : news.yahoo.com