By Aaron Miller
The District of Columbia is suing President Trump’s inaugural committee, the Trump Organisation and the Trump International Hotel in Washington, accusing them of “grossly overpaying” for event space at the hotel to enrich the president’s family during the 2017 inauguration.
The funds meant for renting the hotel space came from the inaugural committee. As a nonprofit, the committee was not legally allowed to use “any portion of its funds to be spent in a way that are designed to benefit private persons or companies,” according to the lawsuit. The committee spent more than a million dollars to rent the hotel space, a cost that D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine says is far above market rate.
“We are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funnelled directly to the Trump family business,” Racine said in a statement about the lawsuit filed Wednesday. He wants those funds, if they are recovered, to be funnelled to a nonprofit promoting U.S. civic engagement.
A Trump Hotels spokesperson dismissed the allegation, saying there was nothing inappropriate about the contract and said the timing of the complaint “reeks of politics.”
“The AG’s claims are false, intentionally misleading and riddled with inaccuracies,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement to NPR. “The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
However, the Democratic attorney general says the inaugural committee paid many times over market value. The complaint filed in D.C. Superior Court states that another nonprofit, the Prayer Breakfast, paid just $5,000 to rent the ballroom on the morning of Trump’s inauguration. That afternoon, the inaugural committee reportedly paid $175,000 to rent the same room.
Nonprofit money was also used to
“pay for a private after-hours party for the Trump family and roughly 1,200 guests at the Hotel,” Racine says, despite concerns raised by inaugural committee staff that the use of funds was inappropriate.
The inaugural committee was complicit in booking the majority of the rooms at the hotel, the complaint states. The lawsuit states that it would be standard practice for the hotel to provide free or reduced event space to a group that booked a large block of rooms.
The nonprofit paid the hotel is said to be $1.03 million, and actually considerably less than the hotel initially asked for. According to the complaint, the Trump hotel gave the inaugural committee an initial quote of $3.6 million for the use of all event space for eight days.
Trump’s accusers say it is inappropriate for him to profit from the U.S president and foreign guests staying at the hotel.