Trump resort to host G-7 meet
President’s choice of his Doral resort raises questions
President Donald Trump has decided to host the Group of 7 meeting next June at the Trump National Doral resort near Miami, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, announced Thursday, a decision that immediately raised questions about whether it was a conf lict of interest for him to choose one of his own properties for a diplomatic event. Mulvaney said the president had considered the possibility of “political criticism” for picking the resort. But Trump chose it anyway because administration officials had considered hotels throughout the country and concluded that it was “by far and away, far and away, the best physical facility for this meeting,” Mulvaney said.
“‘It ’s almost like they built this facility to host this type of event,’ ” Mulvaney told reporters, quoting what he said an unnamed official told him during the planning process. And he dismissed any suggestion that the president would profit from the choice.
Mulvaney said the hotel would put on the summit “at cost,” dismissing questions about whether Trump would profit from the choice. “The president has made it clear since he’s been here that he hasn’t profited since he’s been here,” he said.
But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who leads the House Judiciary Committee, said that in hosting a summit for hundreds of world leaders and their staffs, the White House had potentially violated the emoluments clauses of the Constitution, which prohibit gifts or payments from foreign government sources.
“The administration’s announcement that President Trump’s Doral Miami resort will be the site of the next G-7 summit is among the most brazen examples yet of the president’s corruption,” Nadler said. “He is exploiting his office and making official U.S. government decisions for his personal financial gain. The emoluments clauses of the Constitution exist to prevent exactly this kind of corruption.”
Holding the event at the Doral would effectively be forcing foreign government officials to pay the Trump family to stay at his resort, said Deepak Gupta, a constitutional lawyer who is already involved in two lawsuits claiming that Trump is violating the Constitution by accepting foreign government payments at his hotels.
“This is indefensible,” Gupta said. “It is as blatant as of mixing of private interests and official action that we have seen from this president.”
Mulvaney’s announcement was hardly a surprise; the president had not made it a secret that he wanted to hold the summit at his hotel. At the Group of 7 summit this year, held in Biarritz in the south of France in August, Trump suggested the resort would be a “great place” to hold next year’s meeting.
“It’s got tremendous acreage, many hundreds of acres, so we can handle whatever happens,” Trump said. “People are really liking it, and plus it has buildings that have 50 to 70 units. And so each delegation can have its own building.”
Since he was elected, Trump has made a habit of visiting his own resorts and hotels, with a total of 308 days since 2017 spent at one of his properties, or about a third of his days in office.
His most frequently visited spot is his Mar-a-lago club in Florida, followed by Trump National Golf Clubs in New Jersey and Virginia.