Trump has awarded next year’s G-7 summit of world leaders to his Miami-area resort, the White House said

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has awarded the 2020 Group of Seven summit of world leaders to his private company, scheduling the summit for June at his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida, the White House announced Thursday.

That decision is without precedent in modern American history: The president used his public office to direct a huge contract to himself.

Trump’s Doral resort — set among office parks near Miami International Airport — has been in sharp decline in recent years, according to the Trump Organization’s own records. Its net operating income fell 69 percent from 2015 to 2017; a Trump Organization representative testified last year that the reason was Trump’s damaged brand.

View the complete October 17 article by Toluse Olorunnipa, David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell on The Washington Post 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.

Trump’s July Fourth Event Builds Profits For His Washington Hotel

Trump will line his own pockets while he wrecks the previously nonpartisan Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C., according to a Friday report from HuffPost.

The Trump International Hotel is already sold out on July 3 and 4, and prices on July 5 are more than twice what the hotel normally charges, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

As HuffPost reported, Trump never cut financial ties with his business empire, so he profits every time someone stays at his hotels. Last year, he made $41 million from the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., while his daughter Ivanka, an unpaid White House senior adviser, made $4 million from her stake in the property.

View the complete June 21 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

When Trump visits his clubs, government agencies and Republicans pay to be where he is

Washington Post logoWhen President Trump finished the first official rally of his reelection campaign this week, he got on Air Force One. But he didn’t go home to Washington. Instead, he flew 190 miles in the opposite direction — to visit his own Doral golf resort, outside Miami.

The resort’s profits have fallen since Trump took office. But it had a major event planned for the next day, a fundraiser for Trump’s reelection campaign.

It would be his 126th visit to one of his properties since taking office. And this visit — like more than a dozen before it — would bring paying customers, allowing Trump to play a double role.

View the complete June 20 article by David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell and Michelle Ye Hee Lee on The Washington Post website here.

Moving The Market: Trump Tweets, Stock Prices, And Potential Profits

President Donald Trump’s tweets often set off big gyrations in stock prices. Anyone who knows of the tweets in advance could make a fortune, though not legally.

Who knows of the tweets in advance? Trump knows, and there’s growing speculation that he might be showing tweets in the making to select others in his inner circle. Such suspicions have been bubbling since Election Day 2016, when Trump started attacking specific corporations, causing their stock prices to tank. An investor can make money off a falling stock price as well as a rising one.

NBC’s Howard Fineman opened the floodgates on this troubling discussion with a tweet of his own. “My twitter feed is asking a legitimate question: are @realDonaldTrump’s businesses and family profiting from insider knowledge of his pending — market-moving — tweets, comments and bargaining stands?” he asked. “My guess would be yes.”

View the complete June 12 article y From a Harrop on the National Memo website here.

Trump’s Net Worth Rises to $3 Billion Despite Business Setbacks

Wealth boosted by surging value of stake in two Vornado towers

Golf courses and resort properties declined by $125 million

President Donald Trump’s net worth rose to $3 billion, a 5% gain over the past year, thanks to a jump in the value of an office-building deal he once sued to prevent.

The increase in Trump’s wealth reverses two years of declines and brings his net worth back to 2016 levels, according to figures compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index from lenders, property records, securities filings, market data and a May 16 financial disclosure. It comes despite setbacks at his family company, including the cancellation of two new hotel chains and reduced business at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and seven golf courses. Continue reading “Trump’s Net Worth Rises to $3 Billion Despite Business Setbacks”

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign has already funneled $1.3 million into his businesses

President Trump’s re-election campaign has paid $1.3 million in donor money to his businesses since he took office, according to an analysis by Forbes.

According to the report, Trump’s companies have charged his campaign $1.3 million for rent, lodging, food and other expenses. While Trump self-funded part of his campaign in 2016, none of the more than $50 million in contributions to his re-election campaign have come out of his own pocket.

The campaign has paid more than $800,000 to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, a holding company through which the president owns his stake in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. The Republican National Committee has paid an additional $225,000 to the holding company for rent.

View the complete March 23 article by Igor Derysh on the AlterNet website here.

US paid Trump’s Scottish resort for VIP hotel stays: report

The following article by Max Greenwood was posted on the Hill website May 12, 2018:

 

Credit: © Getty Images

President Trump‘s flagship golf club in Scotland received thousands of dollars from the U.S. government for VIP hotel stays, Scottish newspaper The Scotsman reported.

The payments amounted to more than £5,600 — about $7,600 — and marks the first known instance that one of the president’s Scottish properties has received U.S. government money.

According to purchase orders obtained by The Scotsman, the U.S. initially paid Trump’s Turnberry resort $10,113. About two weeks later, $2,444 was returned to the State Department from the company. Continue reading “US paid Trump’s Scottish resort for VIP hotel stays: report”

E-mails suggest Pruitt’s biggest fear was facing an open Q&A

The following article by Eric Lipton and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times was posted on the StarTribune website May 7, 2018:

© UPI Photo

WASHINGTON – It was supposed to be a town hall meeting where Iowa ranchers could ask questions directly of Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. But when the agency learned that anyone would be free to ask anything, officials decided to script the questions themselves.

“My sincere apologies,” an EPA official wrote to the rancher who would be moderating the event. “We cannot do open q&a from the crowd.” She then proposed several simple questions for him to ask Pruitt, including: “What has it been like to work with President Trump?” Continue reading “E-mails suggest Pruitt’s biggest fear was facing an open Q&A”