President Trump has announced that Venezuela will give the United States “between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels” (Trump’s capitalization) and that he will control the revenues—1.5 to 2.5 billion dollars—that will result from the sale of the oil in order “to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.” He also reportedly expects that “we’re going to be taking oil” from Venezuela for years to come, so these initial revenues might just be a tiny part of a massive fund that he intends to control.
I’m not going to spend time here on the corruption and grifting that such a fund would invite. I’ll instead simply point out that I don’t see how it would be legal for Trump to retain control of Venezuelan oil revenues.
In furtherance of Congress’s power of the purse, the Miscellaneous Receipts Act provides that “an official or agent of the Government receiving money for the Government from any source shall deposit the money in the Treasury as soon as practicable.”
Whether or not the president is “an official … of the Government” for purposes of this provision, the subordinates who would be taking part in the actual receipt of the money surely are. The revenues from the sale of oil received from Venezuela would be “money for the Government.” So the Miscellaneous Receipts Act would require that the revenues be deposited in the Treasury and would forbid Trump from retaining control over them.
In focusing on this legal question, I don’t mean to slight larger questions outside my portfolio, such as: Why is Trump, who claims to be running Venezuela, allowing Maduro’s cronies to stay continue to control Venezuela? Why isn’t Trump insisting on the release of political prisoners? Why is it evidently not a priority to help to restore a government and economy that would encourage the millions of Venezuelans who fled Venezuela—including roughly a million who are now in the United States—to return to it?