WASHINGTON — Seth Barrett Tillman is a lecturer in the law department of Maynooth University in Ireland. He is, he said in a recent court filing, a “lonely scholar with unusual ideas, who is unaffiliated with the popular, the organized and the wealthy.”
One of his unusual ideas is that President Trump cannot be sued for violating the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments.
Several lawsuits have accused Mr. Trump of violating the clause by doing business with entities controlled by foreign governments. If Mr. Tillman is right, those lawsuits should be dismissed.
In June, Mr. Tillman filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that some framers of the Constitution did not think the emoluments clause applied to the president. One of his key pieces of evidence was a document signed by Alexander Hamilton.
The reaction was swift and brutal. Legal historians and a lawyer for members of Congress suing Mr. Trump said Mr. Tillman had misunderstood, misrepresented or suppressed crucial contrary evidence in a second document.