Trump’s DC hotel rental agency failed to review ethical, constitutional conflicts, report says

[ad_1]

WASHINGTON-The federal agency that oversees the government leasing of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, failed to examine ethical conflicts and constitutional issues caused by former President Donald Trump’s refusal to leave the property , says a new congressional report.

The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure report, obtained exclusively by NBC News, found that the General Services Administration does not monitor foreign government hotel payments or identify the sources of more than $ 75 million in loans made by Trump and his family to support. its financial mess.

The GSA has “washed its hands of any responsibility” to check whether the Constitution’s emolument clauses are being complied with, the report says, including by working to ensure revenues from foreign governments do not benefit Trump . The agency has not taken any steps to identify the expenditures of foreign or local government officials and has implemented “zero checks and balances” to ensure that the hotel’s calculations on such payments are “fair, complete and accurate. , “the committee found.

The hotel, located in the Old Post Office Building across the street from the White House and a favorite hangout for Republican lobbyists and lawmakers, reported more than $ 350,000 in revenue from foreign government officials between 2017 and 2019, the committee said, and a separate congressional report in October found that the hotel received approximately $ 3.7 million in payments from foreign governments during the difficult time period.

Representatives of at least 22 foreign governments spent money on various Trump properties, including the hotel, in the first few years of his presidency, NBC News previously reported.

Although the hotel was “equally profitable from” foreign government patronage, it lost more than $ 71 million in total between its “soft opening” in September 2016 and this past January, when Trump stepped down, the new report says. “The hotel has operated at a loss of 33 to 53 months” during those four years, it said.

To keep the troubled hotel afloat, Trump and three of his adult children-Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump-loaned it more than $ 75 million, eventually forgiving about $ 72 million in those loans, the report said; the hotel, by contrast, paid less than $ 3.5 million of the loans, it said.

Although the loans came from companies created to handle the Trump family’s financial interests in the hotel, “The GSA has never made any effort to identify the source of these loans and whether the real source of financing has caused any constitutional concerns, ”the report said.

In addition, as Trump transferred his hotel ownership to a trust controlled by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Allan Weisselberg after the election in 2016, the report said Trump’s refusal to remove his financial interest in the hotel was “problematic” and “created so many conflicts of interest during his presidency that both he and GSA refused to address properly. . “

For example, the report noted that political appointees at the GSA are responsible for making federal real estate decisions “that affect the president’s personal assets as well as those of his competitors.”

Democrats on the committee prepared the report after receiving 14,000 pages of new records from the GSA that they requested two years ago but were not provided during the Trump administration, including previously unreleased financial records. from the hotel.

In a statement issued to NBC News, Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Said the report “sheds light on GSA’s blatant mismanagement of the Old Post Office lease and its attempt to evade responsibility it will support and defend the emolument clauses of the U.S. Constitution. ”

“The GSA keeps Americans in the dark about the hotel’s poor financial health, and above all who spends money on the hotel and how it could influence the Trump administration,” he said.

The report also found that the GSA did not take action to respond to a particular recommendation of the inspector general that it revise a provision of certain leases that specified government officials could not be a party to them by removal of ambiguity relating to the emolument clauses of the Constitution. Instead of removing the ambiguity of the provision, the agency has inexplicably expanded ethical gaps, leaving fewer guardrails to avoid a conflict of interest with senior elected federal officials, including President of the United States, “the committee said.

Despite the hotel’s financial problems, the Trump hotel company recently agreed to sell the hotel rights for $ 375 million, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. The report said Miami-based investment firm CGI Merchant Group was in a contract to acquire the hotel lease and reached a deal to own Hilton’s Waldorf Astoria Group brand and manage the property. CNN reported Tuesday that the Trump Organization has formally notified the GSA about its proposed sale of the property.

The GSA and Trump Organization did not immediately return NBC News ’request for comment on the hotel sales committee’s findings and report. CGI Merchant Group also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In October, a House Oversight and Reform Committee report found that Trump had provided “misleading information about the hotel’s financial situation,” basing the findings on documents obtained from the GSA. The panel found that Trump reported that his hotel earned $ 150 million in revenue while he served in the White House despite it having more than $ 70 million in losses – disclosures that “greatly boosted the financial health of Trump Hotel. “

After he was elected, Trump promised to donate foreign revenues from the hotel to the U.S. Treasury as a way to avoid violating emolument clauses. In February of 2018, his company said it gave out more than $ 150,000, which also claimed in response to critics in Congress that foreign revenues had been overstated.

According to the new House committee report, however, while the Trump Organization has “begun its voluntary initiative to annually provide” the revenues, the GSA has “made no attempt” to oversee efforts to ensure that earnings are clear.

Rep. Said. Dina Titus, D-Nev., Chairwoman of the subcommittee overseeing the GSA, said she wants Congress to change how the GSA leases federal government property to establish “greater accountability and reform” and that she is ” strive to bring more transparency to the process. “

The report suggests several legislative remedies for its findings, including requiring that certain leases include audit rights for the GSA and its inspector general. It also suggests that Congress try to hone any ambiguity in lease language by banning the GSA administrator or designee from entering into a lease that does not even include “a ban on any federal elected official or Cabinet member. to participate, participate in or benefit ”from it.

[ad_2]