Donald Trump’s luxury hotel in Washington D.C. was a money pit, losing $73 million during his tenure in office, according to financial documents released Friday by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
In a press release, the committee notes that Trump painted a different picture on his mandatory financial disclosures – he claimed he made $150 million on the property during his presidency. In reality, he had to inject at least $24 million from a holding company into the hotel to keep it afloat.
The committee also flagged potential conflicts of interest, noting that the hotel received $3.7 million from foreign governments, “raising concerns about possible violations of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.” The anti-corruption emoluments provision was written by the Founding Fathers and limits the gifts an elected official can receive from foreigners.
In addition, in 2018, Deutsche Bank allowed Trump to defer making principal payments on the hotel’s $170 million loan for six years. “Without this deferral, the hotel may have needed to pay tens of millions of additional dollars to Deutsche Bank at a time when it was already facing steep losses. Mr. Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was President,” noted the committee.
The committee obtained the documents from the General Services Administration, the federal agency that leased the property to Trump in 2013.
CNN reports:
In July, the GSA turned over documents that included Trump Hotel’s audited financial statements from 2014 through 2020 prepared by WeiserMazars LLC, Trump’s accounting firm and three years’ worth of Trump’s statements of financial condition compiled by Mazars.
Various House committees have also been pursuing Trump’s tax returns and other financial documents from Mazars USA and Deutsche Bank for years, unsuccessfully.
The documents released Friday raise “troubling questions” about the lease with the General Services Administration 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 Oversight Committee’s Democratic chair Carolyn Maloney wrote in a letter Friday to the GSA.
Trump is reportedly trying to sell his lease to the building that houses the DC hotel. The Washington Post adds:
Trump’s company has previously floated $500 million as a possible target price. Industry experts say it is worth well short of that, but that top luxury hotel chains are likely to be interested in taking over the property and marketing it to a wider audience than Trump was able to given his politics.
Earlier this week, Trump fell off the Forbes 400 list for the first time in decades. The outlet claims Trump’s net worth is down $600 million since the start of the pandemic.
