Even before he was sworn into office, Donald Trump’s refusal to divest from his vast business empire posed an unprecedented ethical challenge. Within weeks of his election, prices were surging at Trump’s new D.C. hotel, which was mostly empty when my colleague Emily Jane Fox visited the Sunday before Election Day. Foreign diplomats were flooding the lobby, sipping Trump-branded champagne, booking ballrooms, and speaking admiringly of the hotel’s landlord, soon to be president. The hotel, which was initially expected to lose $2.1 million over the first four months of 2017, has instead turned a $1.97 million profit. And since Trump’s inauguration, the swamp of financial conflicts has only gotten worse.
The politicization of the Trump brand has cost the Trump Organization dozens of non-political clients that traditionally held events at Trump-owned properties, while creating a surge of new customers with political ties or agendas, The Washington Post reports. According to the paper’s analysis, of more than 200 groups the newspaper identified as having rented out a domestic Trump Organization property since 2014, a total of 85 are no longer customers. And of this group, 30 informed the Post that they ended their patronage as a result of Trump’s political career. Nineteen charities canceled events at the president’s Palm Beach golf club, Mar-a-Lago, in the wake of the Charlottesville scandal alone. “Beautiful golf course. Beautiful facilities. We were treated well. But we couldn’t go back,” Debbie Haroldsen, the acting executive director of an anti-domestic violence group, told the Post, noting that Trump’s campaign trail rhetoric was a contributing factor. Others were concerned that continuing to use Trump properties would, in itself, be viewed as a political statement. “We are not a political organization,” Mike Levin, the head of Harlem Lacrosse, which opted to move its annual charity golf tournament away from a Trump property in New York, said. “Given the current political environment, we opted to reschedule for a different course.”
But just as the Trump Organization is losing customers over its namesake’s politics, others are flocking to the company’s properties because of them. In the last several years, Trump earnings from Republican candidates or committees that patronized his businesses ballooned from just $32,499 in the 2014 election cycle, to $363,701 over a recent seven-month period, the Post reports, citing tax filings. On an event it said was booked back in February 2015, the Republican Governors Association alone spent more than $408,000 to host an event at Trump’s Doral club in Miami, Florida, this past spring.
Other customers patronizing Trump’s properties aren’t hiding their explicit political agendas, or the fact that they’re trying to curry favor with the president. Conservative activist Steven M. Alembik told the Post that he is hosting a $600-per-seat gala at Mar-a-Lago with the hope of sending a political, pro-Israel message to Trump. “He’s got Israel’s back,” Alembik said. “We’ve got his back.” And a number of guests at Trump’s D.C. hotel also have key interests with the U.S. government: the prime minister of Malaysia, who is the focus of a Justice Department corruption probe; the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry that wants more offshore drilling; an association of candymakers seeking federal help in an enduring dispute with the U.S. sugar industry; and a trade group for vape shop owners and e-cigarette makers.
The president has done little to inoculate himself from allegations that he is profiting off the presidency. Although he handed business operations of the Trump Organization over to his two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, Trump Sr. did not divest his holdings and remains able to withdraw money from his trust at any time. While a lawyer for the Trump Organization originally pledged to track payments from representatives of foreign governments, and to donate all of those profits to the U.S. Treasury, the company recently conceded that it does not “attempt to identify individual travelers who have not specifically identified themselves as being a representative of a foreign government entity.” The current Trump Organization policy says it is up to guests to declare themselves representatives of foreign governments. Several ethics watchdogs have suggested that accepting foreign money could run afoul of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution; Trump’s attorneys have argued that payment for specific services do not constitute prohibited “gifts.”
Trump’s critics are paying close attention to how the president may be benefiting, regardless. In the past week alone, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort ignored a court order compelling it to release a full list of visitors to the Palm Beach club; the Justice Department provided a roster of a mere 22 names on Friday, delivered after a deadline that had already been extended. (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the nonprofit group that sought the list, intends to fight the D.O.J. over its response to the request.) The Post also reported Friday that the government paid for Coast Guard officials to stay at Mar-a-Lago for two nights to the tune of $1,092, the latest in a series of government payments to Trump properties that have alarmed experts. “The choice to stay there and have the government pay the $546-a-night rate seems imprudent,” Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor who specializes in ethics issues, told the Post. “If it were not owned by the president, it would still seem problematic. The fact that it’s owned by the president makes it doubly problematic.”
