Trump International Hotel in D.C. is a beehive of activity, ethics questions
WASHINGTON — Red, white and blue balloons rained down over crystal chandeliers in the soaring atrium of the Trump International Hotel at midnight Friday —“a new inaugural tradition,” its social media account promised.
President Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington served as a hub of inaugural activities, but it also stands as ground zero for what top Democrats and some ethics advisers see as his unique web of conflicts of interest.
Trump’s lease with the federal government to develop and operate a hotel inside the historic OldPost Office building prohibits any elected official from benefiting from the property, yet Trump has not divested from his company or this particular project.
“I think it’s a simple matter of amending the lease,” said Patrick Keogh, a real estate investor in Austin who has developed projects for the General Services Administration andother federal agencies.
He said Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and chief negotiator on the hotel, should ask the GSA to exempt her father from that provision of the contract.
Others say Trump must relinquish ownership of the hotel. More broadly, they argue, Trump should sell off his company and put the cash into a blind trust as previous presidents have done. He is not legally required to do so.
The liberal-funded watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington complained to the GSA that it should terminate its deal or take legal action because the president had violated the lease.
Trump handed control of his international real estate development, property management and licensing company to his two adult sons. To help ease the appearance of conflicts of interest, the company said it would not enter into any new international deals, promised to hire a compliance officer and ethics adviser to vet domestic deals, donate foreign profit from its hotels and refrain from doing anything that could be perceived as exploiting the office of the presidency.