Donald Trump’s real estate company is in talks to repurchase a Washington hotel that opponents say was used to spread illicit influence during his first presidency.
The Trump International Hotel, housed in the city’s old post office building a short walk from the White House, was sold in 2022 and is now the Waldorf Astoria.
Eric Trump, the president-elect’s son and executive vice president of his father’s company, met with senior executives from BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank that manages long-term leases, at the family’s Mar-a-Lago mansion. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company plans to hold buyback talks in Florida this week.
Negotiations are said to be in the early stages.
Trump opened the hotel in 2016, the same year he was first elected president, four years after winning a fierce bidding war for the lease with other hotel operators including Marriott and Hilton.
According to Forbes, he spent about $200 million turning it into an “ultra-luxury” hotel.
But the website says that while he attracted Trump supporters, lobbyists and Republican members of Congress during his presidency, his annual revenue was lower than expected, and after the coronavirus pandemic, he earned less than the $100 million expected. It is said that the amount has fallen to $20 million, which is significantly lower than the above. 19 A pandemic has occurred.
He sold the lease for $375 million about 18 months after Joe Biden lost the 2020 election.
The newspaper said his family was looking for a new hotel in the capital and is now interested in repurchasing it as he prepares to return as president on January 20.
The revelations prompted an alarmed response from Democrats, who accused him of overcharging for rooms and using the hotel as “the government’s personal ATM” during his first stay at the White House. They also argued that by hosting foreign dignitaries in the country, the president violates the U.S. Constitution’s Alien Bounties Clause, which prohibits the president from receiving anything of value from the government.
Gerry Connolly, a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, called on the General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency responsible for lease contracts, to block Trump from repurchasing the property.
“The Trump Hotel in Washington is a poster child for conflicts of interest,” he said. “Mr. Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel received an estimated $3.7 million from foreign governments during his time in office, and now Mr. Trump has returned to reap the benefits. We can never tolerate self-interest again.
“GSA, which never answered legitimate questions about its role in the original Trump hotel lease, must abide by the Constitution’s ban on this type of personal profit from government leases by a sitting president.”
A Democratic-led report released last October by the House Oversight Committee revealed that Eric and his brother Don Jr. paid far more than their on-site fees to Secret Service agents who were part of their official security. accused of charging for
“On November 8, 2017, when Donald Trump Jr. stayed at former President Trump’s D.C. hotel, the Trump administration’s Secret Service approved a $1,185 nightly stay, which is the government-approved daily rate of 201. more than five times that of the US dollar,” the report said. .
“That same night, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., rented out more than 200 rooms to private parties for just $125 or $170 each.”
On another occasion, a Secret Service agent familiar with Eric was charged a higher rate, at taxpayers’ expense, than a member of the Qatari royal family during an “extended stay.”
The report also said eight U.S. ambassadors appointed by President Trump frequently stayed at the hotel while on official business. This meant that “the payments they made using taxpayer funds were in direct violation of the Constitution’s prohibition on household remuneration.”
The report identified four judges who stayed in hotels before being appointed as federal judges, and five who paid for their rooms and services, who were subsequently granted presidential pardons.
In a statement marking the report’s publication, then-Oversight Committee Chairman Jamie Raskin urged Congress to “immediately create legal barriers to prevent the kind of rip-offs and corruption that our Founding Fathers so strongly opposed.” ” requested.
The Trump Organization has previously denied marketing the hotel to foreign dignitaries and said it wrote checks to the U.S. Treasury for money earned from foreign government guests.
