Last Call At Trump's Monument To Corruption

WASHINGTON – Fifteen months after Donald Trump left town, the crown jewel of his unprecedented and out-in-the-open corruption schemes as president is disappearing as well, with his namesake hotel closing down and changing hands.

Trump International Hotel, just down the street from the White House, was for four years the place where both domestic and foreign lobbyists mingled with administration officials, with every dime of profit from the many millions of dollars spent on food, alcohol and lodging there flowing directly into Trump’s personal bank accounts.

“It is astonishing that just a few blocks from the White House, Trump opened a conduit for corrupt cash to flow from special interests, including foreign governments, into his own pockets,” said Norm Eisen, an ethics lawyer in the Obama White House.

No previous president created such an arrangement to personally profit from entities seeking the favor of his executive branch, which had the cooperation of most of his appointed Cabinet officers in making the hotel, its featured restaurant and its lobby bar the administration’s de facto storefront for access.

Journalist Zach Everson, who made the hotel his area of expertise, reported that of the 38 Cabinet members who served under Trump over the course of his four years, 29 were seen at least once at the hotel. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon went as far as to live at the hotel early on while looking for permanent housing.

From daughter and son-in-law Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to National Security Council staff to Vice President Mike Pence to Pentagon officials to members of the Cabinet ― the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington logged 499 separate visits to the hotel using public reporting and social media.

“These people were gaining access purely because they were making payments to him,” said Robert Maguire, the CREW researcher responsible for tracking Trump’s businesses. “There was never a night when it was not packed. Never.”

Secret Profits

Exactly how much money Trump took in through his hotel is impossible to know from public sources. Trump refused to release his tax returns during his candidacy and presidency — breaking four decades of precedent — and the hotel’s business records are private. While it is possible to determine from lobbying disclosure forms how much any given entity spent to persuade Trump’s executive branch, there is no way to know how much was spent at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave.

Trump’s family business did turn over a total of $459,320 to the U.S. Treasury that it claims was profit generated by foreign entities — an attempt to assuage critics who pointed out that the Constitution bars a president from accepting payments from foreign powers. But that figure relies on calculations by the Trump Organization, which remains under investigation in New York State for its business practices.

Once the center for lobbyists seeking favor from the Trump administration, the Trump International Hotel, blocks from the White House, has often been nearly empty since Trump's presidency ended. (Photo: S.V. Date/HuffPost)

A related CREW analysis found that domestic and foreign interests spent at least $13.7 million at Trump’s various properties, including his Washington hotel. It also found 30 instances in which interest groups won favorable actions from Trump’s administration after hosting events at Trump properties.

The Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, for example, won a favorable decision on a greenhouse gas regulation within weeks of spending $700,650 at his golf course in Doral, Florida. Payday lenders spent a total of $1 million over two events at Doral and won the elimination of an Obama-era rule that would have cost the industry $7.5 billion.

“We actually think that our estimate is a lowball,” Maguire said of the $13.7 million figure. “We don’t have the actual invoices for these events.”

Trump’s current staff did not respond to a HuffPost query. A former White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity said no law addressed Trump’s situation because the ethics laws that apply to most executive branch employees specifically exempt the president and vice president.

“If Donald Trump didn’t break the law, then whatever money went from lobbyists into Donald Trump’s pocket wasn’t illegal,” the former official said. “Maybe there should be laws on the books.”

Maguire said previous presidents policed their own behavior.

“Usually it’s not an issue because presidents take very seriously avoiding even the appearance of conflict of interest,” he said. “But that wasn’t a concern for Trump. His concern was to profit from the presidency.”

Once A Gusher, Now A Trickle

Sunday evening at the hotel, which staff believed could be the final night operating as a Trump property, was a slow one, as usual since Trump left the White House.

Only a handful of the tables in the cavernous lounge were occupied, and only two customers were at the expansive bar. Even though Trump himself was at that moment at a rally in Nebraska railing against the numerous injustices he claims to have suffered, none of the four televisions at the bar was tuned to his performance.

Two were showing the Nationals-Giants baseball game. One had the Mets-Phillies. The fourth was set to the openly pro-Trump Newsmax, where host Sebastian Gorka was discussing the rising menace of cancel culture. After a time, staff changed that channel to baseball as well.

Trump’s hotel, like most in the country, was hammered by the pandemic. In the nation’s capital, public health precautions included periodic forced closures of indoor bars and restaurants.

This March 11, 2019, file photo shows the entrance of the Trump International in Washington. (Photo: via Associated Press)

Yet even when pandemic restrictions were lifted last year, business at Trump’s hotel was slow to rebound without him in the White House. While curious tourists continued to trickle in and some Trump supporters visited out of loyalty, it was no longer the de rigueur gathering spot for the GOP in official Washington — thereby belying the frequent claim of many Republicans that the hotel would have been a popular spot even if Trump had not been in the White House.

“Once the president of the United States was no longer the owner of that hotel, it emptied out,” Maguire said.

In November 2021, Trump’s family business announced that it had sold its rights to the lease from the General Services Administration to a Miami investment group. The announcement that it would no longer be a Trump property dried up interest even more, hotel staff said on condition of anonymity.

As closing day for the sale neared — it could be as early as this week ― uncertainty for the employees has intensified.

“They tell us nothing!” one confided to a friend who asked Sunday night whether he would still have a job after the sale. “I don’t even know if I’ll be working Wednesday.”

The Trump Organization did not respond to a HuffPost query. Hilton, which will license the hotel when it reopens under its Waldorf Astoria brand, said in a statement: “We are always focused on meeting our guests’ needs in the destinations where they want to travel — with the right hotel in the right place at the right time. We continue to recognize the opportunity for growth in the nation’s capital and hope to have more to share soon.”

Corruption As A Business

Trump was unique among modern-era presidents to continue running and profiting from his private business while in office. He made a point of staying in his own properties in Florida, New Jersey, Las Vegas, Ireland and Scotland during his travels — choices that wound up putting taxpayer dollars into his own pockets because of the requirement that Secret Service agents and other government staff remain in close proximity.

CREW learned after filing a Freedom of Information Act request that taxpayers spent $12,369 so that his protective detail could stay at his hotel in Las Vegas over a three-day trip. Trump made sure to end each night in Las Vegas, even when the day’s events took place in other states.

Trump also forced the Republican Party and his own campaign committees to use his properties for fundraisers, while other Republican candidates and committees followed suit in hopes of winning an endorsement or, at the very least, staying on his good side.

The Republican National Committee, for instance, during Trump’s presidency spent $723,762 by itself at the Washington hotel, which received a total of $2.6 million from 112 different GOP candidates and committees through his presidential tenure, according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

This July 14, 2018, file photo shows then-President Donald Trump waving to protesters while playing golf at his Turnberry golf club in Scotland. (Photo: via Associated Press)

In addition to the publicity value that his visits generated, Trump on occasion went out of his way to promote his golf courses and hotels, sometimes even using government resources as props. In 2019, his resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, used a video of Trump landing at the seaside course aboard Marine One and posted it to social media within minutes of his departure.

But all of that revenue likely paled in comparison to the money he took in from those who wanted favorable governmental action from his appointees.

Lobbyists for Saudi Arabia booked blocks of rooms, 500 nights’ worth in all, totaling some $270,000 soon after Trump’s election, according to a Washington Post report. Just months later, Trump’s first foreign trip in office began in Saudi Arabia — something no previous president had done.

“It’s absolutely astounding, that they were literally putting millions of dollars in his pockets while they were trying to get favorable outcomes from his administration,” Maguire said. “That is just astoundingly corrupt. And it honestly still blows my mind that that is not a big deal.”

Eisen, who is using the Washington hotel as the prime example in his new book “Overcoming Trumpery,” said the open corruption was key to Trump’s entire presidency.

“This was a feature, not a bug, of his governance style,” Eisen said. “It is no coincidence that with Trump out of office, the corrupt business model of the hotel that bore his name no longer works and it has changed hands.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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