Donald Trump's DC Hotel Host Top Officials From 6 Countries Who Spent Thousands Of Dollars To Seal Crucial Deals

Officials from at least six countries splurged thousands of dollars at former U.S. President Donald Trump‘s hotel in Washington to land crucial deals, showed documents.

What Happened: Foreign officials from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and China spent over $750,000 at the Trump International Hotel in 2017 and 2018, showed documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee from Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars. 

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The officials rented costly rooms and indulged in expensive services in many such cases, the report revealed. 

In a written statement to Benzinga, Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump said, “As a company, we went to tremendous lengths to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, not due to any legal requirement, but because of the respect we have towards the office of the Presidency.”

He added, “We walked away from billions of dollars in new deals, ceased all international expansion, engaged with an outside ethics advisor to review any material transactions and furthermore, have voluntarily donated all profits from foreign government patronage at our properties back to the United States Treasury on an annual basis.”

Then he went on to state that his father “is the first President in history to donate his annual salary back to the United States government. No President has made a greater financial sacrifice for the benefit of the country.”

An official of the Saudi defense ministry, for example, rented the hotel’s most expensive rooms in March 2018 – when Riyadh was seeking Washington’s support over a diplomatic spat with its neighbor Qatar. It added that the official spent nearly $86,000 from March 7 to 18 – while renting several of the $10,500 suites.

In the same period, Trump fired the former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who supported and urged Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to ease their blockade against Qatar. And just days after that, Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House and praised his country as a “very great friend and a big purchaser of equipment and lots of other things.” 

The U.S. then approved arms sales to Riyadh worth more than $1 billion within days of the visit.
“These documents sharply call into question the extent to which President Trump was guided by his personal financial interest while in office rather than the best interests of the American people,” Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement.

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