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Former President Donald Trump’s company lost more than $70 million during his four-year term at his Washington, D.C., hotel despite taking in millions from foreign governments, according to a report from a congressional committee investigating his business.
The House Committee on Oversight and Improvement said the luxury hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, was struggling so badly that the Trump Organization had to inject $27 million from other parts of its business and delayed payments on a $170 million loan after receiving preferential treatment from a leading lender.
The committee said the damages came despite an estimated $3.7 million in revenue from foreign governments, business which ethics experts say Trump should have refused because it created a conflict of interest with his role as president.
The Trump Organization said in a statement that the Democrat-led committee’s findings were misleading and false, and that it did not receive any special treatment from the lender.
“This report is nothing more than continued political persecution in a desperate attempt to mislead the American public and discredit Trump in pursuit of his own agenda,” the company said.
The committee’s documents, the first public disclosure of audited financial statements from the hotel, show huge losses despite consistent business by lobbyists, businesses and Republican groups while Trump was in office.
Deutsche Bank’s delay in the loan to the president was an “unknown preferential behavior” that the president should have reported because the bank has substantial business in the US, the committee said in a letter to the General Services Administration, the federal agency overseeing hotels. The federal government has leased the hotel to the Trump Organization.
“The documents provided by GSA raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with GSA and the agency’s ability to manage the former President’s conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant,” the Committee wrote in a statement.
