An attorney for Trump said in January that the president was resigning from the Trump Organization and handing leadership over to his sons to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh joined District counterpart Karl Racine at a news conference in the nation's capital, saying the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in neighboring Maryland.
The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia plan to file a lawsuit on Monday alleging that foreign payments to President Donald Trump's businesses violate the us constitution, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The lawsuit, the first of its kind brought by government entities, centers on the fact that Trump chose to retain ownership of his company when he became president.
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CREW is outside counsel on the lawsuit the attorneys general plan to file.
The suit, which was filed Monday morning in federal court in Maryland, claims Trump is in violation of the Constitution's foreign and domestic emoluments clause, which bars anyone "holding any office of profit or trust" from accepting "any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state".
If a federal judge allows the case to proceed, Racine and Frosh say, one of the first steps would be to demand through the discovery process copies of Trump's personal tax returns to gauge the extent of his foreign business dealings.
A spokesman for Maryland's attorney general declined to comment on the latest emoluments case. Last week, a group of Democratic members of Congress said they also planned to file suit soon. Just days after Trump's inauguration in January, the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of NY. They claim the president's Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., had officials from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia stay there and thus took payments from foreign governments. The government also said Trump hotel revenue does not fit the definition of an improper payment under the constitution.
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