WASHINGTON ― President-elect Donald Trump will be in violation of the lease on his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the day he takes office, according to the agency that owns the lease.
In response to a letter from House Democrats, Michael Gelber, the deputy commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service, said that Trump will be in breach of his lease as soon as he is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. The hotel lease specifically states that “no … elected official of the Government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”
Gelber informed House Democrats who penned the letter to the GSA, including House Oversight & Government Reform Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Transportation & Infrastructure Committee ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), that the only way to avoid a violation of contract would be if Trump fully divests his ownership interest in the hotel. He would still be in breach if he simply transfers management control to his two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, as he has said he would do.
The Trump International Hotel in D.C. is just one of the many conflicts of interest facing the president-elect before he takes office, but it is one of the most glaring. Beyond the clear issue of whether he will be in violation of his contract with the government, upon assuming office Trump would be able to appoint a new head of the GSA, which would have to renegotiate terms of his lease with his children every year. This would put any GSA employee in a terribly uncomfortable and compromised position.
As Steve Schooner, a procurement law professor at George Washington University Law School and former government contracting official, previously told The Huffington Post: “There’s an imbalance of power. In a 60-year, complicated contract, we’re going to ask a civil servant at GSA to negotiate annually with the president’s children.”
He called the situation “mind-boggling.”
The hotel has already emerged as a hotspot for foreign governments who want to influence the new regime. The Embassy of Bahrain and the government of Azerbaijan rented out ballrooms for their annual end-of-year parties in the capital. Hotel staff held a briefing for foreign governments to sell them on renting the luxury rooms as a means of getting in the good graces of the incoming president.
The conservative Heritage Foundation and the Republican National Committee have also booked space for their parties.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump speaking at the opening of his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
According to a follow-up letter sent by House Democrats that details their communications with GSA on this issue, neither Trump nor his company contacted the GSA at any point during the campaign to discuss the terms of their lease and the possibility of a breach of contract if he won the White House.
Further, the letter states, “the Deputy Commissioner stated that GSA informed the Trump transition team about concerns raised by us and others about the imminent breach, but that GSA heard nothing to date.”
GSA stated that their main contact with the Trump Organization when the lease was agreed upon was Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter. Ivanka Trump currently serves in multiple capacities across the Trump Organization and her father’s transition team, completely blurring the line between business and government.
Trump was supposed to announce a plan Thursday for how, if at all, he will disentangle himself from his business, but canceled. He has set some undefined date in January, perhaps before he takes office, to inform the public about how he will avoid his many existing conflicts of interest. Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller said on a press call Wednesday morning that Trump will address the hotel lease next month.
The president-elect stated on Twitter that he will hand his company off to his two oldest sons, but they are also on his transition team. In fact, Donald Trump Jr. helped select Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) as the nominee for interior secretary.
Cummings has been leading the Democratic push for Congress to hold hearings on Trump’s business conflicts before he takes office. House Republicans have almost uniformly dismissed such concerns. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the Oversight & Government Reform Committee, says that Congress doesn’t need to hold hearings until after Trump is in office ― when he’ll already be in violation of his lease.
