Tag: Trump DC Hotel

Trump’s D.C. Hotel Jacked Up Its Prices as Trump Began Plotting a D.C.-Based Convention

The president hasn’t committed to giving his acceptance speech at the White House. But his nearby hotel has conspicuously begun charging way more for the weekend it’s scheduled.

As President Donald Trump hints that he plans to deliver his nomination speech from the White House on Aug. 27, the hotel bearing his name down the street is making a power play of its own: spiking its room rates by more than 60 percent for those convention dates. 

Listings for rooms at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., via Hotels.com, show rooms for one adult on the night of the address starting at $795 and running as high as $2,070.

That price tag represents a massive increase from the $495 starting rate currently offered for the dates one week following and one week prior. For three days before Trump’s scheduled speech—which were originally scheduled to be the dates of the GOP convention in Charlotte, North Carolina—the hotel is charging $695 a night for its cheapest room. The hotel will begin charging $795 that Thursday, and continue through the weekend, before dropping back to $495 on Monday. Continue reading.

Trump hotel lease is subject of latest House subpoena

Panel demands legal records, communications, profit statements for business

Another House committee on Thursday issued a subpoena for an investigation of the Trump administration — this time demanding documents related to the federal government’s lease of the historic Old Post Office building in Washington to the president’s hotel business.

The subpoena from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and signed by its chairman, Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore., demands that the General Services Administration produce documents including legal records, communications between it and Trump and his children, as well as profit statements for the business, the Trump International Hotel.

The committee is investigating whether Trump’s investment in the hotel, located blocks from the White House, violates the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Trump has refused to divest from his financial interests in the building, which one of his companies began leasing in August 2013. Trump is the sole beneficiary of a trust with the controlling interest in Trump Old Post Office LLC, according to the committee.

View the complete October 24 article by Jessica Wehrman on The Roll Call website here.

Trump hotel in Washington charged Secret Service $200,000 in president’s first year

The hotel five blocks from the White House has been used by Trump and his supporters for events that require the agency’s protection.

During the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the Trump International Hotel in Washington charged the Secret Service more than $200,000 in taxpayer money, including a bill topping $30,000 for two days of use, according to expense documents obtained by NBC News.

The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request covering Secret Service expenditures, detail money the agency spent at the property from September 2016 to February 2018, which came to a total of $215,254.

While the nature of the charges were not disclosed in the documents, the hotel five blocks from the White House has become a go-to venue for Trump and his supporters for various events, including a fundraiser the president attended Tuesday for his re-election campaign.

View the complete June 27 article by Kenos Abou-Sabe and Safia Samee Ali on the NBC News website here.

Ivanka Trump Earned $4 Million During 2018 From Trump International Hotel

First daughter Ivanka Trump earned $4 million in 2018 from her investment in the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital, according to her personal financial disclosure, released by the White House on Friday and reported on by Bloomberg News.

Trump’s D.C. hotel has been an ethical nightmare ever since he entered the Oval Office.

Multiple entities are suing, saying Trump is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution by profiting off the foreign governments who book rooms in the hotel while visiting Washington, D.C. — possibly in an attempt to influence Trump.

View the complete June 14 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.

T-Mobile executives seeking merger approval booked more than 52 nights at Trump’s D.C. hotel — more than previously known

John Legere, chief executive officer of T-Mobile US Inc., center, arrives to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in June of last year. Credit: Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg)

Executives from the telecom giant T-Mobile — which last year asked the Trump administration to approve its megamerger with Sprint — have booked at least 52 nights at President Trump’s hotel in the District since then, even more than previously reported, according to newly obtained records from the hotel.

The revelations come as political scrutiny of the proposed deal is mounting on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) issued letters demanding information about the T-Mobile executives’ stays and whether Trump was informed of them. The issue is likely to come up at House subcommittee hearings on the merger next week.

Last month, The Washington Post reported that “VIP Arrivals” lists — issued by the Trump International Hotel daily to its staff — indicated that T-Mobile executives had stayed repeatedly at Trump’s hotel. On the day after the merger was announced, for instance, the lists showed nine T-Mobile executives were expected to check in.

View the February 6 article by Jonathan O’Connell, David A. Fahrenthold and Mike DeBonis on The Washington Post website here.

Donald Trump’s Hotel Bans Press For The Inauguration, Raising First Amendment Concerns

The following article by the Media Matters Staff was posted on their website January 18, 2017:

President-elect Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel is banning reporters from its premises during inauguration week, according to Politico’s Daniel Lippman. The move underscores the incoming president’s personal hostility toward the press and raises First Amendment issues, as the hotel space is leased by the president-elect from the federal government.

Throughout the 2016 campaign and into the transition, Trump has made his hostility to the press a centerpiece of his political strategy. Trump declared war on the press, which included mocking specific reporters as “neurotic,” “dumb,” and a “waste of time.” He retreated to softball interviews during the final weeks of the campaign with largely friendly interviewers, Fox News, and fringe media. Since the election, Trump has lashed out at The New York Times several times for its “BAD coverage.” Trump’s own incoming press secretary also admitted that he threatened to remove a journalist who was trying to ask the president-elect a question, and prominent Trump supporter and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich applauded the threat, calling it “a signal, frankly, to all the other reporters that there are going to be real limits” for proper behavior. Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Hotel Bans Press For The Inauguration, Raising First Amendment Concerns”