Trump’s inaugural committee sued
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee violated nonprofit laws by “grossly” overpaying for events held at a hotel owned by his family business, according to a lawsuit by the District of Columbia’s attorney general.
Trump’s inaugural committee made an “unfair and unjustified” payment of more than $1 million to the Trump hotel in downtown Washington for events from Jan. 17 to 20, 2017, after failing to consider less expensive alternatives, according to the complaint by Attorney General Karl Racine made public on Wednesday.
The president and his eldest daughter, Ivanka, now a senior White House adviser, were both aware that the Trump International Hotel was overcharging the committee for its use of event space and went ahead with the deal anyway, Racine said. The committee didn’t use the facilities for the full four days that included Inauguration
Day, and one of the events “amounted to a private party for the Trump children,” he said.
Neither Trump is a named defendant in the case. Both were top executives at the family-owned Trump Organization before Trump became president.
“The Trump Hotel ended up charging rental rates that were well in excess of its own pricing guidelines,” Racine said. Those payments flowed directly to the Trump family.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization rejected Racine’s lawsuit as “a clear PR stunt” that was “false, intentionally misleading and riddled with inaccuracies.”
“The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that the hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue,” she said in a written statement.