Tag: Trump International Hotel

Trump hotels charge Secret Service up to $650 per night while protecting him

Secret Service personnel traveling with President Trump to his private luxury properties in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J., pay rates as high at $650 per night for lodging, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The Post investigation tallied the amount of taxpayer dollars spent in Trump’s properties and found that the Secret Service spent $159,000 at Trump’s D.C. hotel in his first year alone. In the president’s out-of-state properties, the Trump company is recorded as charging as much as $17,000 per month for rent.

The newspaper noted that after a thorough search of rentals in the area for comparable homes, the average cost for rent was $3,400. 

Trump previously told The Hill in 2015 that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” but currently he often visits his properties in Florida and New Jersey, Secret Service in tow. 

In an October interview with Yahoo News, Eric Trump, the executive vice president of The Trump Organization, answered questions about the president’s decision to host the 2020 Group of Seven summit at the president’s golf club, Trump National Doral Miami in Florida.

“If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free,” Trump said. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.”

Those numbers don’t match the Post’s findings. Trump told the Post that the company is legally required to charge a fee, though they were unable to find what law he was citing.

The Post’s report comes just hours before an appeals court ruled that Democrats cannot sue President Trump over emoluments claims.

More than 200 House and Senate Democrats alleged that the president’s holdings and refusal to put his business assets into a blind trust violates the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign countries. 

The lawmakers’ lawsuit claimed that foreign diplomats’ patronage to Trump hotels is exactly the kind of entanglement that the framers of the Constitution hoped to avoid. 

Separately, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have requested details on Trump’s travel costs as part of negotiations over legislation regulating the Secret Service. However, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has told the committee that he opposes releasing that information until December, after the general election.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[The Hill]

Barr books Trump’s hotel for $30,000 holiday party

Attorney General William P. Barr is planning a holiday treat for his boss.

Last month, Barr booked President Trump’s D.C. hotel for a 200-person holiday party in December that is likely to deliver Trump’s business more than $30,000 in revenue.

Barr signed a contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, for a “Family Holiday Party” in the hotel’s Presidential Ballroom Dec. 8. The party will feature a buffet and a four-hour open bar for about 200 people.

Barr is paying for the event himself and chose the venue only after other hotels, including the Willard and the Mayflower, were booked, according to a Justice Department official. The official said the purpose of Barr’s party wasn’t to curry favor with the president.

Barr holds the bash annually, and it combines holiday festivities and a ceilidh, a party featuring Irish or Scottish music.

“Career ethics officials were consulted, and they determined that ethics rules did not prohibit him from hosting his annual party at the Trump hotel,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the party is not a Justice Department event.

Barr’s decision to book his boss’s hotel marks the latest collision between Trump’s administration and his business, which the president no longer operates but from which he still benefits financially.

Trump said Monday that he was likely to hold next year’s Group of Seven international summit at his golf resort in Doral, Fla. Already the federal government and GOP campaigns have spent at least $1.6 million at his properties since he entered office, according to a Post analysis, though the actual figure is likely to be higher because of the difficulty of obtaining up-to-date records.

Barr, the nation’s top law enforcement official, has previously faced criticism for adopting language that hews closely to Trump’s. For example, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III complained that Barr’s characterization of his investigation — which closely mirrored the president’s — “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s final report. Experts have cited that and other examples in questioning Barr’s independence from the president.

“It creates the appearance that high-level political appointees or allies of the president may feel like they need to spend money at the president’s businesses as a show of loyalty, and that is something that makes me deeply uncomfortable and should make taxpayers deeply uncomfortable,” said Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

The Trump Organization declined to comment. Representatives from the Willard Hotel declined to comment, citing the company’s privacy policy. A spokeswoman for the Mayflower Hotel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Barr’s decision to book the Trump hotel is noteworthy, in particular, because Justice Department attorneys are defending the president’s business in court. Trump’s D.C. hotel has hosted a number of foreign governments as clients, business that has generated two lawsuits, one from the attorneys general of Maryland and D.C. and the other from about 200 Democratic members of Congress.

Both cases are being considered in federal court, and the Justice Department is defending the president’s position that he has not run afoul of the anti-corruption provisions in the Constitution called the domestic and foreign emoluments clauses.

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D), a plaintiff in one of the emoluments cases against Trump, said Barr’s plans make him fear “that all this does is it normalizes conduct of presidential supporters or would-be supporters, who clearly know a clear avenue to curry favor with the president and that is to do business with the president’s business.

White House aides, including inside the White House Counsel’s Office, have warned Trump and Cabinet officials against making official visits to his properties.

Barr’s event falls into a different category. It isn’t an official event — it’s a party. His contract requires that he spend $4,500 to rent the ballroom — space designed by Ivanka Trump before she joined her father in the White House — and $135 per person for a buffet and open bar, a number that is likely to change after Barr chooses a menu for the event.

Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics who has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s ethics record, called Barr’s decision to book Trump’s hotel “one of those things that doesn’t violate the rules, but it’s really troubling.”

“He keeps sending signals that his loyalty is to a politician and not to the country,” Shaub said. “And it’s part of an ongoing erosion of credibility at the Department of Justice.”

It’s difficult to determine whether Barr will pay market rate for the event, as the Justice Department official asserted he would. The contract, sent to Barr at his Northern Virginia home, calls for a minimum of $100 per person for food and beverage before adding 35 percent for taxes and tip. It requires that Barr pay at least $31,500, even if he cancels the event.

The hotel’s publicly available menu lists a “banquet dinner” as costing $115 per person for two hours plus $30 for each additional hour. A hosted bar costs $29 for the first hour per person and an additional $12 per hour for each additional hour. If Barr opts for that level of service at those prices, the food and beverage bill for 200 guests would probably top $45,000.

Hotels typically have lots of available space on Sunday nights, leading them to offer less expensive rates. A contract the hotel signed with Virginia Women for Trump for a Monday event in the summer of 2018, obtained separately by The Post, required a $3,050 room rental fee and a $39,000 banquet fee for a much larger group, 818 people, though it did not include an open bar.

Hempowicz said that if Barr receives a discount from the hotel, it would give other Americans dealing with the Justice Department reason for concern, whomever the party is for.

“If the attorney general gets a discount while the Justice Department defends the hotel in court, that is not how the justice system is supposed to work and it’s not how the Department of Justice is supposed to work,” she said.

[Washington Post]

Saudi-Funded Lobbyists Paid For 500 Nights At Trump D.C. Hotel Right After Election

Saudi Arabia-funded lobbyists paid for rooms at President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel within a month of the 2016 presidential election and kept coming back, racking up more than 500 nights worth of rooms in three months, The Washington Post reported, citing documents and organizers of the stays.

The Saudi-backed organizers were putting up veterans who were offered a free trip to Washington to help lobby against a law that Saudi Arabia opposed, the Post reported.

(Read the full Washington Post story.)

The lobbyists at first were hosting veterans in northern Virginia, but switched to the Trump hotel in December 2016. One organizer said the move was because the Trump International Hotel offered a discount from the usual $768 a night rate, and denied it was to try to gain favor with Trump.

But some of the vets the Post interviewed said they felt like they were being used twice ― to lobby for Saudi Arabia, and then again to bring business to Trump.

“It made all the sense in the world, when we found out that the Saudis had paid for it,” said Navy veteran Henry Garcia. He went on three trips, and said that what made the Trump hotel trips different from trips with other veterans groups were the private rooms, open bars and free dinners.

“We’ve done hundreds of veterans events, and we’ve stayed in Holiday Inns and eaten Ritz Crackers and lemonade. And we’re staying in this hotel that costs $500 a night,” said Marine veteran Dan Cord.

Trump’s business interests are in the spotlight once again as the D.C. and Maryland attorneys general served subpoenas on the Trump Organization and a dozen related businesses on Wednesday, CNN reported.

The subpoenas are seeking business documents that may show foreign payments to the hotel.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump is profiting from foreign and state spending at his D.C. hotel, in violation of the Constitution’s ban on gifts from foreign governments. The Justice Department has signaled it may try to fight the evidence-gathering process.

Trump has defended the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, even after intelligence agencies fingered the prince in the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi royal family and its allies have spent tens of millions on Trump hotels and condos.

[Huffington Post]

Trump was involved in scuttling FBI building across from Trump’s DC Hotel: Inspector General report

The Inspector General of the General Services Administration on Monday released an in-depth report showing President Donald Trump was involved in scuttling plans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to build a new headquarters.

The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.

The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”

The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.

The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.

The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.

“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”

Connolly also urged further investigation.

“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.

[Raw Story]

Don’t forget: Trump is Using the Presidency to Enrich His Family

Amid the avalanche of news about North Korea, Russia and President Trump’s open feud with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), don’t lose sight of this bit of news: Trump’s family business has earned a nearly $2 million profit in just four months this year from the new Washington hotel that bears his name.

Given that in the past 24 hours Trump has threatened nuclear war with North Korea, thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats from Moscow and publicly attacked his party’s leader in the Senate, it’s easy to lose sight of another ongoing scandal: How Trump continues to line his family’s pockets through the presidency.

It’s unprecedented to have a president who retains a stake in businesses as sprawling as the Trump empire. But Trump has taken business conflicts to yet another level by tying the Trump Hotel so explicitly to the presidency.

Trump’s Washington hotel is the new power hub in Washington. Before he became president, the Trump family company projected the hotel would lose money this year. But instead it has become a profit center, owing to its transformation into “a kind of White House annex,” The Post’s Jonathan O’Connell reported this week.

After spending just one month in the hotel’s public spaces, Post reporters witnessed, among other things, luminaries of Trump’s world, including current White House staffers and former New York mayor and Trump ally Rudolph Giuliani, “posing for selfies at the bar the night Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey,” and former Trump campaign manager-turned-lobbyist Corey Lewandowski sitting in “a black leather chair marked ‘Reserved.’” In July, Republican fundraisers used the space to raise $10 million for Trump’s reelection campaign.

Trump’s tweets and Thursday’s mad, impromptu news conference might eclipse his presidency-for-profit, but don’t forget: his “working” vacation has also been a daily advertisement for his Bedminster, N.J., golf resort, another showpiece in his family’s vast holdings around the world. When Trump is on television, golfing or eating or roaming around Bedminster, it’s free advertising not only for the resort, but also for the Trump brand as a whole.

Of course, we knew this was coming. Before Trump took office in January, ethics watchdogs warned that unless Trump established a blind trust, he risked embroiling himself in unprecedented conflicts of interest. Trump declined to take this step, and although he has left the day-to-day operation of the family companies to his adult sons, he and his family members, including his daughter Ivanka, who works at his side in the White House, still stand to profit from them.

And they have. From the time the Washington hotel opened last year through June 2017, Ivanka Trump has earned $2.4 million from her stake in it.

The Trump Hotel is the most blatant example of how Trump is selling the presidency. No ordinary luxury hotel in a city that boasts more than a few, the Trump Hotel is where foreign dignitaries, lobbyists, White House staff, Cabinet officials, Trump confidants, Republican fundraisers, elected officials, religious leaders and assorted sycophants gather — to see and be seen, to rub elbows with the powerful, to possibly catch a glimpse of the president himself, and, most crucially, to patronize the hotel owned by the most powerful person in the world.

It doesn’t come cheap: Guests have paid, on average, $652.98 a night to stay there, according to the Post investigation; a special cocktail in the bar costs $100, and a bartender might try to sell you a $2,500 bottle of bubbly. With a social media-obsessed president, patrons are eager to post about reveling in the opulence and in praise of the Trump brand.

As Walter Shaub, the since-departed director of the Office of Government Ethics, has said of Trump’s refusal to divest from his business holdings, “a conflict of interest is anything that creates an incentive to put your own interests before the interests of the people you serve.” Trump’s continued stake in the hotel and ongoing promotion of it by using his name as the draw risks the appearance of “using the presidency for private gain,” Shaub told Vox.

But while the D.C. hotel is the most prominent example of Trump profiting off his office, it’s not the only one. Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s ethics counsel, has called the hotel “really just a tip of the iceberg.”

There’s an even more cynical twist to the story that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Consider the working-class voters Trump has duped into believing he’s come to Washington to save their jobs and way of life. They couldn’t possibly dream of spending the kind of money it takes to stay at Trump’s hotel. But Trump is continuing to use one of his chief selling points in running for president — his success as a businessman — to maintain support from this base. And the money Trump rakes in from his hotel feeds that image. For Trump and his supporters, then, those profits are not an abuse of his office, they are proof of the financial success he says is the mark of a strong leader.

Beyond this, there’s another dynamic at work: Trump is able to get away with this sort of self-dealing in part because he’s making a mess on so many other fronts. Because of the sheer chaos of Trump’s presidency — Trump’s erratic behavior, the West Wing mayhem, the cloud of the Russia investigation — this alarming new reality has gone overshadowed, and he has managed to move the ethical goalposts of the Oval Office. The public has only so much bandwidth to absorb the scale and scope of this administration’s unraveling of ethical norms.

One of the biggest challenges of the post-Trump era will be how to restore the norms and standards that Trump has so blithely trashed. Someday, Americans — from the people who run our government to the citizens in every corner of the country — will have to reckon with what he has done, and figure out how to undo it. That process will probably have to start with some basic reminders that the presidency is not for sale.

[Washington Post]

Trump threatens to sue CNN, according to GOP fundraiser audio

President Trump pummeled CNN during his first re-election fundraiser Wednesday night, according to audio released Friday by The Intercept.

“Boy, did CNN get killed over the last few days,” Mr. Trump said in the audio that lasted for about 40 minutes.

The fundraiser speech took place at at his hotel in Washington, D.C.; media were excluded and attendees were charged $35,000 each.

Mr. Trump went on to bash CNN commentator Van Jones and the president of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and asked the audience if he should sue people who work there.

“These are really dishonest people. Should I sue them? I mean, they’re phonies. Jeff Zucker, I hear he’s going to resign at some point pretty soon. I mean these are horrible human beings,” Mr. Trump could be heard saying.

The president said “it’s a shame” what they’ve done to CNN’s brand.

“But as far as I’m concerned, I love it,” he said. “If anybody’s a lawyer in the house and thinks I have a good lawsuit — I feel like we do. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

A Republican source told CBS News that the fundraiser was expected to pull in roughly $10 million for the GOP.

[CBS News]

Media

The Intercept

 

Trump Holds $10 Million Dollar Fundraiser at His Hotel

Protesters greeted the president with cries of “Shame!”as he arrived at the $35,000 per person bash.

Many were unhappy with the Republican healthcare plan, holding placards that said “Healthcare, not tax cuts”.

Holding the fundraising event at Trump International Hotel has increased concerns about conflicts of interest.

Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House for former President George W Bush, said it was unacceptable for the president to be potentially benefiting financially from this kind of event. He should have picked another hotel, he said.

But Kathleen Clark, a law professor who specialises in government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, told USA Today it did not break any laws.

It is not clear if the hotel is being paid to host the event.

Republican National Committee officials were expecting to raise about $10m, with about 300 places available.

Not all the money raised will go towards the Trump 2020 campaign – some will go to other Republican Party causes.

It is unusual for a president to raise cash for re-election so early in his first term, only five months since the former property developer took office.

“Of course he is running for re-election,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Wednesday.

Reporters were barred from attending the event.

The president has previously been criticised for entertaining foreign leaders at another of his properties in Florida.

A lawsuit filed in June argued President Trump was “flagrantly violating the constitution” by accepting payments from foreign governments, a charge the White House has strongly denied.

[BBC]

Trump will hold fundraiser at his own hotel in D.C.

President Trump has chosen his Washington hotel as the site for a fundraiser that could be used to benefit him and other Republicans.

Campaign director Michael Glassner confirmed the location to The Associated Press on Wednesday. He calls it a premier and convenient choice. The Tuesday fundraiser in Washington will be for larger donors.

Mr. Trump officially kicked off his re-election campaign on Inauguration Day by filing Federal Election Commission paperwork, making it the earliest such effort by a sitting president. But Mr. Trump has not officially announced his candidacy, and in a letter accompanying his filing, he wrote it did “not constitute a formal announcement of my candidacy for the 2020 election.”

Through the end of March, Mr. Trump’s campaign had raised more than $7 million through small donor appeals and the sale of merchandise. The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee will share proceeds.

The Trump Organization completed a $200 million renovation of the government property weeks before Election Day. Trump has since distanced himself from the finances of the hotel, but critics say conflicts remain.

The venue poses possible ethical and legal questions for Mr. Trump, and is sure to raise questions from Democrats who continue to question the intersection of government and Mr. Trump’s business ventures.

Mr. Trump’s hotel, located just blocks from the White House also on Pennsylvania Avenue, opened shortly before the 2016 election. Mr. Trump has said he would donate proceeds from foreign officials to charity, but the White House and the Trump Organization have yet to release any details of that plan. The Department of Justice is arguing in court that the president is not violating the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution by accepting foreign payments.

Earlier this year, Ivanka Trump, who works as an assistant to her father and plays a prominent role in the White House, told “CBS This Morning” she manages any “conflict” that arises with the hotel.

Other details of the fundraiser have yet to be released publicly.

In some ways, Mr. Trump hasn’t stopped campaigning. On his 100th day in office, he held a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania. Wednesday night, he will make an appearance in Iowa for a rally.

[CBS News]

Oil Lobby Met With Trump Interior Secretary at Trump Hotel

The oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group met on March 23 with President Trump’s interior secretary at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. It also happened to be the same day the administration killed a rule that oil companies opposed.

The location of the meeting is raising eyebrows and ethical questions. The Trump International Hotel, situated just blocks from the White House, is ground zero for companies and foreign leaders who may be trying to cozy up to the president by using his properties, critics and ethics experts fear.

“It creates the appearance they are currying favor” by staying at a Trump hotel, said Lawrence Noble, general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog.

Noble, a CNN contributor, said while the meeting may not violate specific ethics rules, it shows that companies have discovered a “not-so-subtle way of showing support for the president.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke addressed the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) board of directors on that day at the Trump International Hotel, according to Zinke’s recently-released schedule.

Zinke, a strong advocate of the oil industry, spoke for 10 minutes, and then held a brief question-and-answer session, the Interior Department confirmed in a statement to CNNMoney.

That same day, the Interior Department announced plans to get rid of an Obama-era rule toughening standards on how much fossil fuel companies owe the government for drilling and mining on federal land. The energy industry had fought the rule. The oil industry group had even filed a lawsuit against it in December 2016.

The very next day, on March 24, the API put out a statement saying it was “pleased” by the Interior Department’s decision to get rid of the rule’s “substantial burdens.”

The Interior Department defended Zinke’s appearance at the API event.

“Like many secretaries before him, the Secretary was invited to speak at API’s meeting and he accepted the invitation. There is nothing unusual about a secretary speaking to stakeholders,” Heather Swift, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement.

Swift said Zinke spoke about his “goals for the Department of the Interior and American energy.”

The Interior Department’s ethics office said it had “thoroughly vetted” Zinke’s API meeting. “We found that it presented no ethics violation or conflict of interest,” the ethics office said.

Noble, the ethics expert, agrees that meeting with an industry group “in and of itself is not unusual” as long as Zinke didn’t insist the gathering take place at a Trump hotel. There’s no evidence that Zinke picked the location of the API meeting.

It’s not clear how much the API spent on holding the meeting at the Trump International Hotel. Events at the hotel likely cost at least $100,000, The Washington Post has previously reported.

Neither the API nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment.

Zinke’s schedule doesn’t indicate who attended the meeting with API, which is chaired by ConocoPhillips (COP) CEO Ryan Lance.

The Trump International Hotel, which opened last September on the grounds of a renovated post office, has been a lightning rod for controversy. The Trump Organization rents space for the hotel from the General Services Administration, an agency of the Untied States government.

As president, Trump oversees the GSA, which makes him effectively both landlord and tenant.

Critics have argued the hotel violates the lease terms because there is a clause saying no government official can be a party to the 60-year lease that was signed in 2013.

In March, the federal government ruled that the hotel is not in violation of its lease. The GSA cited Trump’s decision to transfer control of his vast business empire to his sons and a Trump Organization executive.

However, Trump is still the ultimate beneficiary of the success of the company and the hotel.

Noble said there’s an easy way to resolve concerns about such conflicts involving Trump’s hotel.

“Just decide you won’t do any government business at the president’s hotel. Set a rule,” he said.

[CNN]

President Trump’s Hotel Received $270,000 from Saudi Arabia

The Trump International Hotel recently took in about $270,000 in payments tied to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the country fights to roll back a U.S. terrorism law, according to newly filed lobbying reports.

The spending, which covered lodging, catering and parking expenses, was disclosed in Justice Department filings last week by MSL Group Americas, a public relations firm. The filings detailed the work the firm engaged in between Oct. 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017 on behalf of the Saudis, Bahrain and other foreign governments.

In a statement Monday night, Trump Organization officials said they would donate any profits from the transactions at the end of the year.

The disclosure of Saudi spending, however, could spark fresh debate about President Trump’s decision to retain ownership of his real-estate and branding empire while serving in the White House. Trump turned over management of his companies to his adult sons and a veteran Trump Organization executive but still can benefit financially from his business interests.

Last month, Trump visited Saudi Arabia, the first stop on the first foreign trip of his presidency

The firm reported paying more than $190,200 for lodging, $78,204 for catering and roughly $1,600 for parking at the Trump International Hotel in Washington — part of a larger campaign by the Saudis that brought U.S. military veterans to the nation’s capital to lobby against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act or JASTA. The Daily Caller first reported on the hotel payments.

Last year, Congress passed a bill over President Obama’s veto that would allow families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any alleged role in the plot. The Gulf nation has denied any role in the attacks and is lobbying to ease the law’s provisions.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and ethics watchdogs have argued that Trump’s continued ownership of his businesses could lead to a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars foreign payments to U.S. officials without congressional approval.

White House officials referred questions about the Saudi payments to the Trump Organization.

Before he took office, Trump pledged to donate foreign profits from his hotels to the U.S. Treasury. However, the Trump Organization is not trying to comprehensively identify all foreign profits to its hotel business, according to a company policy document recently provided to the House Oversight Committee.

“To fully and completely identify all patronage at our properties by customer type is impractical in the service industry and putting forth a policy that requires all guests to identify themselves would impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand,” the Trump Organization’s document said.

[USA Today]

1 2