Donald Trump Concealed D.C. Hotel’s $70 Million In Losses With “Misleading” Disclosures, House Committee Says
Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel lost $70 million during his time in office, as the former president “grossly exaggerated” the financial health of the property, a House committee said on Friday.
Citing documents it obtained, the House Oversight and Reform Committee also said that the Trump International Hotel, which opened in 2016 in the Old Post Office Building, collected an estimated $3.7 million from foreign governments from 2017 to 2020, “raising concerns about possible violations of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.”
The committee, chaired by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) called on the General Services Administration to provide additional documents related to the records it kept from Trump’s company. The Trump hotel operates under a long-term lease with the General Services Administration, which requires disclosures of certain financial records.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not immediately return a request for comment.
According to the documents, Trump reported that the hotel earned him more than $150 million in revenue during his time in office, yet the committee obtained records that showed the $70 million in losses. Trump’s holding company was forced to inject $24 million to help out the hotel.
“By filing these misleading public disclosures, President Trump grossly exaggerated the financial health of the Trump Hotel,” the committee said. “He also appears to have concealed potential conflicts of interest stemming not just from his ownership of this failing business but also from his roles as the hotel’s lender and the guarantor of its third-party loans.”
More specifically, the committee said that documents revealed that in 2018, Deutsche Bank allowed Trump to delay payment on a $170 million loan, which he personally guaranteed, for a period of six years. Trump, however, did not disclose the deferral while he was president.
The committee also said that Trump failed to disclose details of the foreign government payments to the GSA, and donated only a small portion of the payments to the Treasury that the Trump Organization determined were profits. The committee also claimed that Trump failed to disclose certain debts when bidding on the lease for the property.
During Trump’s presidency, the hotel was a prime hangout and meeting spot for the his supporters, members of the administration and the president himself.
The Trump Organization had put the hotel up for sale in 2019, but pulled it off the market when the pandemic hit. But The Washington Post reported that the company recently hired a broker to try to sell its lease in the property.
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