Foreign governments spent more than $3 million at then-President Donald Trump’s hotel in D.C., Trump International Hotel, during the first three years of his presidency, according to new information released by House Oversight Committee Democrats.
On Friday, the committee sent a letter to General Services Administration (GSA) chief Robin Carnahan summarizing its findings. The GSA had provided the documents on the Trump Organization and Trump Hotel as the committee attempted to probe the “unresolved ethics crisis left by” the ex-president.
The documents showed that Trump failed to ensure he didn’t receive foreign emoluments in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses, the committee stated.
Based on how the Trump Organization’s own method of calculating its profits from foreign governments, the Trump International Hotel raked in $3.75 million in foreign government payments from 2017 through 2019, the committee said.
“Based on the average daily rate for a room at the Trump Hotel, this represents the cost of more
than 7,400 room-nights purchased by foreign governments,” the letter continued.
Those payments helped reduce the hotel’s losses, according to the Oversight committee.
The committee also noted that most of the foreign money that the Trump Organization had identified in the records was funneled into the D.C. hotel. The rest of Trump’s businesses and properties received much less, according to the committee.
Additionally, Trump received “undisclosed preferential treatment” from the German bank Deutsche Bank when it received a $170 million loan to his hotel, the committee stated.
The committee told Carnahan that it had sought the records from the GSA due to “serious concerns” about Trump’s “presidential conflicts of interest and undue influence” over the agency, which is tasked with leasing out the Old Post Office Building, where Trump International Hotel is located.
The documents “raise new and troubling questions” about Trump’s lease with GSA and the agency’s “ability to manage the former President’s conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant,” the committee said.
The letter directed Carnahan to hand over more documents by October 22 so that the committee may “investigate and legislate on the pressing issue of presidential ethics and to prevent future presidents from profiting off the office of the presidency.”
Read the letter below:
