October 7, 2024

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The report shows that foreign governments spent more than $750,000 at the Trump Hotel

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Officials from six countries spent more than $750,000 at former President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel while trying to influence his administration, according to documents handed to congressional investigators.

Records obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform from Mazars USA, Trump’s former accounting firm, show that the governments of China, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates spent more money at the Trump International – renting rooms for up to $10,000 a night – than previously known because they sought to influence the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Rep. Caroline B. The committee said in a statement Monday. “These documents, which the committee continues to obtain from Mazars, will inform our legislative efforts to ensure that future presidents do not abuse their positions of power for personal gain.”

Hotel records show extravagant spending by foreign officials. The Malaysian prime minister spent $1,500 on a personal trainer over eight days, $259,724 on the Trump Hotel, for example, and the Saudi Ministry of Defense spent $85,961 on the hotel for members of a Saudi delegation, including $10,500 on overnight suites. Qatari officials spent more than $300,000 over the three months leading up to a meeting between Trump and the Arab country’s emir.

The oversight committee’s findings from the financial documents are based on extensive reporting by The Washington Post detailing how the Trump Hotel benefited from foreign governments during his time in office and the blurred lines between his business and his administration.

Last year, Maloney and Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) Hundreds of pages of financial documents related to Trump properties from the General Services Administration — the agency that leased the federally owned property to Trump — and estimated that the Trump Hotel had received $3.7 million over three years in payments from foreign governments.

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Trump and the oversight committee reached an agreement in September after years of litigation that would finally allow the committee to see a limited collection of Trump’s records with Mazars to review his compliance with presidential ethics and disclosure laws.

The records released Monday cover a limited period, but Maloney requested additional documents from the National Archives, including all documents and correspondence related to the Trump hotel or hotel stays at Trump-owned properties, and documents and communications related to foreign payments to the Trump hotel. and documents and correspondence related to Chinese or Russian tourism at the Trump Hotel or the residences of Chinese or Russian officials.

The panel also found that Republican lobbyists with close ties to the Trump administration who were acting on behalf of these countries spent tens of thousands at the Trump Hotel during the same periods.

Elliott Broidy, vice chair of the Trump Victory Committee and vice chair of the Republican National Committee at the time, stayed at the Trump Hotel “for four nights during the Malaysian delegation’s visit and spent $5,345 over the course of September 2017,” Maloney wrote to acting archivist Debra Stedel-Wall in A letter explaining the committee’s findings. Broidy later Admission of guilt to act as an unregistered foreign agent and admitted to secretly lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Malaysian and Chinese interests.