Investigators are looking for dozens of expensive gifts given to Trump and his family by foreign governments, report says

Then-President Donald Trump talks to reporters while hosting Republican Congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet in the Oval Office at the White House on July 20, 2020.

Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

• Congressional investigators are looking for gifts given to Trump and his family by foreign governments.
• The gifts include diamond earrings, golf clubs, and a soccer ball from Putin, The Washington Post reported.
• The House Oversight Committee has asked whether the gifts were transferred to the National Archives.

Congressional investigators are trying to locate dozens of expensive gifts given to former President Donald Trump and his family by foreign governments, The Washington Post reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter.

The House Oversight Committee has asked the National Archives to check whether the gifts were transferred to them from the White House after Trump left office, as the law required, the paper reported.

The gifts include diamond earrings, golf clubs, a large painting of Trump, a gold-plated collar of the ancient Egyptian god Horus, a 2018 World Cup soccer ball from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a $6,400 collar of King Abdulaziz al Saud from Saudi Arabia, a person familiar with the request told the paper.

The items are worth an estimated $50,000 in total, sources told The Post.

It is unclear why the committee requested to locate those specific items and how far in the process of trying to find them, the paper said.

A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment to The Post except to say that the investigation is ongoing.

The Oversight committee launched a probe this summer into whether Trump properly followed the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, which prevents government officials from keeping gifts from foreign governments with a value of over $415, unless they personally pay for them.

Although there is no specific criminal penalty for improperly retaining the gifts, ethics experts say that it could be warranted depending on the circumstances, per The Post.

"If you have a very valuable item that you are obligated by law to turn over to the federal government and you fail to do that, I don't know that would preclude a criminal action — we've just never seen it done," Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at CREW, an ethics watchdog organization, told the paper.

Officials are also required to report any gifts from foreigners valued over $415.

The New York Times previously reported that the Trump administration did not provide information about gifts from foreign governments in 2020, and the State Department said it was unable to compile an accurate list of gifts for that year.

The Trump administration was known to have a history of poor record-keeping practices. The committee has also requested records from Trump's team about its record-keeping, a Trump adviser told the paper.

This probe comes amid a separate FBI investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents, which culminated in the search of his Mar-a-Lago property that uncovered troves of sensitive and classified documents.

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