Donald Trump’s name is about to be erased from one Washington landmark. The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Trump International Hotel is being sold.
CGI Merchant Group, a Miami-based investment firm, is in contract to acquire the hotel lease for the Trump International Hotel, which is located a short walk down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. CGI intends to remove the Trump name, and it has reached a deal with Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. to have the property branded and managed by Hilton’s Waldorf Astoria group, these people said.
A House committee investigating ex-President Trump’s lease on the property has reported the hotel lost more than $70 million between 2016 and last year, according to the Journal. The sale of the hotel will not stop the investigation by the House into Trump’s “conflicts of interest and potential constitutional violations raised by Donald Trump’s lease of this hotel from the federal government while he was President,” according to a spokeswoman for the committee.
The Washington Post adds:
After Trump won the presidency, however, the property almost immediately became a lightning rod for controversy and litigation. Foreign leaders, Republican groups and companies seeking government approvals spent millions there, and ethics experts and Democrats repeatedly sued the company, alleging it was violating the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which bars the president from accepting gifts or payments from foreign leaders. None of the cases produced a ruling against Trump or his company.
