House Oversight chair demands administration not grant relief to Trump Organization

[struggle4progress]

BY AILA SLISCO ON 4/22/20 AT 12:20 AM EDT

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has warned the Trump administration against allowing a government agency to issue rent reductions for Washington, D.C.'s Trump International Hotel.

Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) issued the statement Tuesday night, along with Rep. Gerald E. Connelly (D-Va.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Government Operations. A New York Times report from earlier in the day had suggested that the Trump Organization was seeking rent relief that may be offered due to the COVID-19 pandemic by the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that owns the property the hotel is leasing.

"If these new reports are accurate, it appears that the President's company is now seeking rent reductions from GSA—which of course reports to him," the statement reads. "Our Committee and ethics experts across the political spectrum have long warned of these blatant conflicts of interest, and it is time for GSA to finally stand up to the President and grant no rent reductions for the Trump Hotel" ...

https://www.newsweek.com/house-oversight-chair-demands-trump-administration-not-grant-relief-trump-organization-amid-1499365

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[struggle4progress]

2. Trump Organization asks administration for leniency on lease

APR. 21, 2020
By Matt Stieb

With the coronavirus shutdown devastating the hospitality industry, the Trump Organization ... asked Deutsche Bank’s private banking division if they’d be willing to delay payments on the hundreds of millions in outstanding loans that Trump has borrowed ...

... The New York Times confirmed .. Tuesday that the president’s business .. asked the government to change its lease payments at the Trump International Hotel ... While the Trump Organization owns the 263-room hotel, it is located in a federally owned building leased by the government to Trump in 2013 for a 60-year deal. While co-president Eric Trump confirmed that they were up to date on the rent, the family business has asked about delaying future rent payments ...

... Earlier this month, the business contacted its landlord in Palm Beach County, Florida, to see if it could skip its five-figure rent payments for the Trump International Golf Club. Despite the repeated attempts to seek rent forgiveness, the White House has not proposed such a lenient emergency policy for the over 36 percent of Americans who rent their homes.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trump-org-asks-trump-admin-for-leniency-on-d-c-hotel-lease.html

[struggle4progress]

3. Like you, Donald Trump wants break on rent. Unlike you, his landlord reports to him

Russ Choma

... But this particular property is unique in that the landlord takes its orders from the president himself.

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, operates out of a federally owned property, an old post office building just blocks from the White House. In 2013, the Trump Organization signed a lease to operate a hotel in the building and promised to pay at least $3 million a year in rent. When Trump took office, he refused to sell or give up control of his businesses; he simply declared that his two adult sons and some company executives would take charge of the daily operations. The hotel has been a bright spot in Trump’s portfolio during his presidency, if not always as a business then at least as a symbol. Many of his properties have seen declines in revenue, but the DC hotel, which opened in 2016, just days before the election, injected tens of millions of dollars of new revenue into the Trump Organization and has become a popular hangout for lobbyists and foreign officials seeking to get Trump’s attention ...

... in the months before the pandemic began spreading, it reportedly had an occupancy rate of around 57 percent, less than what hotel business experts say is needed to turn a profit, and the Trumps had begun shopping around their 60-year lease on the property. All that suggests that the hotel was not as profitable as it might appear. The hotel has remained open through the pandemic, unlike most other luxury hotels in DC, but with an occupancy of about 2 percent ...

The decision will be up to the GSA, but agency officials all ultimately work for Trump. The kind of conflict of interest could have been avoided. In the lease that Trump signed in 2013, a clause prohibited federal office holders from participating in the arrangement. But after he had already taken office, the GSA determined that it did not apply to Trump, because he wasn’t a federal office holder when he signed the deal. Steven Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in government contracting and who has long been a critic of the GSA’s decision not to apply the conflict-of-interest rule to Trump, says this is the scenario the rule was designed to prevent ...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/like-you-donald-trump-wants-a-break-on-his-rent/

[babylonsister]

4. Yay! Rec'd. As it should be. nt

[struggle4progress]

5. Dems say GSA can't give hotel lease break

By Dorothy Atkins

Law360 (April 22, 2020, 3:20 PM EDT) -- Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday called for the General Services Administration to "finally stand up to the president" and reject Trump Hotel's rent reduction requests, following a report that the Trump Organization has asked for a break on lease payments due to business losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement, House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said the federal government should have ended the lease with the 263-room luxury hotel, which is located in the federally owned Old Post Office building, when Donald Trump was sworn in as president. They said the deal violates the lease's own terms, which explicitly bars contracts with public officials.

"Instead, President Trump has been violating this contract for three years while GSA ignores the law," the statement said ...

https://www.law360.com/articles/1266323/house-dems-say-gsa-can-t-give-trump-hotel-a-lease-break

[NCjack]

6. Trump is a multi-billionaire, by his claims. If he really needs the money (i.e., he

lied to us about his wealth), he should release his financial data so that we can see it for ourselves.

[crickets]

7. +1

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. Providing such information should be required when even applying for relief.