I thought that the GSA also has a rather obvious rule that no government official can have a lease on a GSA property. Of course Trump wasn’t one when he got the lease, but he should have been forced to get rid of it when he was elected.
Besides that, the GSA should not have given a lease to a historic building without some requirements of respecting the style of the building. Trump’s hotel simple sticks Trump’s hotel type period French/huge crystal chandelier style into a Richardsonian Romanesque late 19th century building, which is pretty much opposite that in style.
(Later) Of course I didn’t read the thing and in fact only noticed now that there is a copy of the report here (good work TPM). Anyway I heard on NPR today that the IG report also includes the obvious lease by a federal official issue.
The problem is, how do we get the toothpaste back into the tube? And whose job is it?
However, I have zero problems with saying, okay, no backsies but from tomorrow onward, no Trumpie-Money, no Trumpie-Profit, oh, yeah and your lease is cancelled immediately.
… Christie asserts that Trump has a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”
Could be that Christie saw all that cold greasy FAsT food on the table and was seriously butt-hurt at not being invited. He’s a hungry man!
So I read the doc. They covered this with worthless word parsing…‘he was already admitted to lease when he became President’ and ‘the irrevocable trust’ means ‘someone else’ owns it. This was a self-fulfilling prophecy…GSA made the decision they didn’t want to have a war with President and looked for language to ‘justify’ that.
Now the IG is empowered to bring it up, because when the GOP had the total majority there was little point.
Considering the amount of money Trump has earned from this, and how much of that is from foreign sources, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It screams “Presidential Access”, and explains why so many lobbyists stay there (even though the cost ends up being exorbitant)…
I also still want to know why other Trumps (Melania, Ivanka, et al) have stayed in overseas hotels, spending up to $100k in a day, and haven’t been taken to task for that…
I had not considered that point, but I think you are right. The IGs will also be more willing to speak their minds (and release their investigations) knowing that the House will then follow it up.
Yes, the lease says that a government official can’t be a beneficiary of the lease. The Trumpp patsy at the GSA (and he needs to be called to testify before Congress) who said that Trumpp wasn’t in violation of that standard GSA clause accepted a very transparent fig leaf in which the hotel profits flowed to trusts rather than to Trumpp and his children. Trumpp and his spawn were the sole beneficiaries of the trusts, so…
The GSA took the easy way out at the time. In my understanding, the IG is saying that if you are government, the constitution is the final say, your obligation is to know it and uphold it, so you have to meet head-on any conflict when issues arise.
Now the harder question, how with the IG make that stick? What will be the consequences?
