The House of Representatives released documents about former President Trump’s financial affairs, and they reveal his hotel lost $70 million while he was president. He has been trying to sell the hotel but has been unable to find buyers. The Associated Press has the story:
Trump delayed a payment on his hotel while in office due to losses
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s company lost more than $70 million operating his Washington, D.C., hotel while in office, forcing him at one point to get a reprieve from a major bank on payments on a loan, according to documents released Friday by a House committee investigating his business.
In addition to the payment delay, the Trump Organization also had to inject $27 million from other parts of its business to help the hotel, according to documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The committee said financial statements it obtained show the losses came despite an estimated $3.7 million in payments from foreign governments, business that government ethics experts say Trump should have refused because it posed conflicts of interest with his role as president.
The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The documents from the committee, the first public disclosure of audited financial statements from the hotel, show steep losses despite a brisk business while he was in office from lobbyists and businesses and Republican groups.
The loan delay by Deutsche Bank to the president was an “undisclosed preferential treatment” that should have been reported by the president because the bank has substantial business in the U.S., the committee said in a letter to the General Services Administration, the federal agency overseeing the hotel. The hotel is leased by the federal government to the Trump Organization.
“The documents … raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with GSA 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 committee, overseen by Democrat Carolyn Maloney of New York, wrote in a news release.
Trump’s company has been trying to sell the 263-room hotel since the fall of 2019 but has struggled to find buyers.
By BERNARD CONDON
