IV 
115TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 5 
Clarifying any potential misunderstanding as to whether actions taken by 
President-elect Donald Trump constitute a violation of the Emoluments 
Clause, and calling on President-elect Trump to divest his interest in, 
and sever his relationship to, the Trump Organization. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JANUARY 4, 2017 
Mr. WELCH (for himself, Mr. RYAN of Ohio, Ms. VELA´ZQUEZ, Ms. SCHA-
KOWSKY, Mr. BLUMENAUER, Mr. DEFAZIO, Ms. CLARK of Massachu-
setts, Mr. LANGEVIN, Ms. SPEIER, Ms. JACKSON LEE, Mr. JOHNSON of 
Georgia, Mr. DESAULNIER, Mr. DEUTCH, Mr. CONNOLLY, Mr. KEATING, 
Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. KIND, Mr. TED LIEU of California, Mr. THOMPSON 
of Mississippi, Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas, Ms. BONAMICI, Ms. KAPTUR, 
Mr. SCHIFF, Mr. NADLER, Mr. COHEN, Mr. MICHAEL F. DOYLE of 
Pennsylvania, Ms. KUSTER of New Hampshire, Mr. CARSON of Indiana, 
Mr. HUFFMAN, Mr. LOEBSACK, Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN, Mr. LYNCH, 
Mr. MCGOVERN, Mr. COOPER, Ms. PINGREE, Ms. MICHELLE LUJAN 
GRISHAM of New Mexico, Mr. HASTINGS, Ms. LOFGREN, Mr. BRENDAN 
F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania, and Mr. CUMMINGS) submitted the following 
concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight 
and Government Reform 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Clarifying any potential misunderstanding as to whether ac-
tions taken by President-elect Donald Trump constitute 
a violation of the Emoluments Clause, and calling on 
President-elect Trump to divest his interest in, and sever 
his relationship to, the Trump Organization. 
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•HCON 5 IH 
Whereas article I, section 9, clause 8 of the United States 
Constitution (commonly known as the ‘‘Emoluments 
Clause’’) declares, ‘‘No title of Nobility shall be granted 
by the United States: And no Person holding any Office 
of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent 
of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Of-
fice, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, 
Prince, or foreign State.’’; 
Whereas, according to the remarks of Governor Edmund 
Randolph at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the 
Emoluments Clause ‘‘was thought proper, in order to ex-
clude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any 
one in office from receiving or holding any emoluments 
from foreign states’’; 
Whereas the issue of foreign corruption greatly concerned the 
Founding Fathers of the United States, such that Alex-
ander Hamilton in Federalist No. 22 wrote, ‘‘In repub-
lics, persons elevated from the mass of the community, 
by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens, to stations of 
great pre-eminence and power, may find compensations 
for betraying their trust, which, to any but minds ani-
mated and guided by superior virtue, may appear to ex-
ceed the proportion of interest they have in the common 
stock, and to overbalance the obligations of duty. Hence 
it is that history furnishes us with so many mortifying 
examples of the prevalency of foreign corruption in re-
publican governments.’’; 
Whereas the President of the United States is the head of 
the executive branch of the Federal Government and is 
expected to have undivided loyalty to the United States, 
and clearly occupies an ‘‘office of profit or trust’’ within 
the meaning of article I, section 9, clause 8 of the Con-
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stitution, according to the Office of Legal Counsel of the 
Department of Justice; 
Whereas the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of 
Justice opined in 2009 that corporations owned or con-
trolled by a foreign government are presumptively foreign 
states under the Emoluments Clause; 
Whereas President-elect Donald J. Trump has a business 
network, the Trump Organization, that has financial in-
terests around the world and negotiates and concludes 
transactions with foreign states and entities that are ex-
tensions of foreign states; 
Whereas Michael Cohen, an attorney for Donald J. Trump 
and the Trump Organization, has stated that the Trump 
Organization would be placed into a ‘‘blind trust’’ man-
aged by Donald Trump’s children, Donald Trump, Jr., 
Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump; 
Whereas the very nature of a ‘‘blind trust’’ is such that the 
official will have no control over, will receive no commu-
nications about, and will have no knowledge of the iden-
tity of the specific assets held in the trust, and that the 
manager of the trust is independent of the owner, and as 
such the arrangement proposed by Mr. Cohen is not a 
blind trust; 
Whereas Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Wil-
liam J. Clinton, and George W. Bush have set the prece-
dent 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 intermingling of the business of the Trump Or-
ganization and the work of government has the potential 
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