NEW YORK (AP) — Former United States President Donald Trump’s company lost more than $70 million on its Washington, D.C. hotel during his four-year term, despite taking in millions from foreign governments, according to a congressional committee. According to the documents released on Friday, the investigation is on. his business.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform said the luxury hotel just a few blocks from the White House was struggling so badly that the Trump Organization had to inject $27 million from other parts of its business and pay delays. Received preferential treatment from a leading lender. On a loan of $170 million.
The committee said the damage came despite an estimated $3.7 million in revenue from foreign governments, trade which ethics experts say Trump should have refused because it created a conflict of interest with his role as president.
The Trump Organization said in a statement that the Democrat-led committee’s findings were misleading and false, and that it did not receive any special treatment from the lender.
“This report is nothing more than continued political persecution in a desperate attempt to mislead the American public and discredit Trump in pursuit of his own agenda,” the company said.
The committee’s documents, the first public disclosure of audited financial statements from the hotel, show huge losses despite brisk trading by lobbyists, businesses and Republican groups while Trump was in office.
The committee said in a letter to the General Services Administration (GSA) that the alleged loan delay by Deutsche Bank to the President was an “unknown preferential treatment” that should have been reported by the President as the bank has substantial business in the US. The federal agency that oversees hotels. The hotel has been leased by the federal government to the Trump Organization.
“The document … raises new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with the GSA and the agency’s ability to manage conflicts of interest for the former president during his tenure, when He was effectively on both sides of the contract as landlord and tenant.” The committee’s Democratic co-chairs, Carolyn Maloney of New York and Gerald Connolly of Virginia, wrote in their letter.
GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For its part, Deutsche Bank said in a statement that the committee made “multiple false statements” about the loan agreement, but declined to elaborate, citing loan confidentiality concerns.
The committee’s letter to the GSA said the hotel’s losses contrasted with the “exaggerated image of financial success” that the president was portraying in the personal financial disclosure report he sent each year to a federal ethics agency. But those reports are required to disclose only revenue, not profits, an apples-to-oranges comparison that was confiscated by one of Trump’s sons in a tweet blasting the committee.
“Please know the difference between gross revenue and net profit before writing us a long letter,” Eric Trump wrote, describing the committee as “incompetent.”
Trump’s company has been trying to sell the 263-room hotel since the fall of 2019, but has struggled to find buyers during the coronavirus pandemic at an initial starting price of more than $500 million.
The head of the government ethics watchdog Crew said the damage shed new light on Trump’s refusal to ban foreign governments from patronizing his business.
“The only lifeline coming from people and organizations and governments was corrupt business,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “His use of the presidency to get business was absolutely necessary to stem the flow of the deficit.”
To address concerns about conflicts of interest, Trump promised to send payments to the US Treasury annually on foreign government earnings from his business.
Under the deal, the Washington Hotel paid a total of more than $350,000 in the first three years of his presidency, the committee said. Critics of the voluntary deal say Trump’s definition of earnings is unclear and gave the president plenty of room to reduce the figure.
Although the Washington Hotel was badly hurt by pandemic-related shutdowns last year, audited financial statements released by the committee show it was suffering every year, even before it was open.
He lost about $50 million in the first three years of his presidency, then $22 million last year.
