Now that Donald Trump is no longer able to use the hotel at the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., as a means of exploiting extra dollars from those who wanted a fast track to the Oval Office or a quick pencil line through environmental regulations, he’s trying to let the whole thing go. Last November, Trump let it be known that his D.C. namesake Trump International Hotel was up for sale, with an asking price for the ongoing federal lease to the historic building set at $375 million.
For some, the sign that Trump was willing to give up the home of the worst cocktails in Washington was a good indicator that he wasn’t serious about coming back to town in 2024. For others, it was just an admission of how, under Trump’s management, the hotel managed to lose over $70 million in four years—in spite of having a Saudi lobbyist rent 500 rooms and Trump’s inaugural committee paying for rooms and event space that was never used.
Now it seems that Trump may lose both the hotel and his walking-away money, because his breakup with accounting firm Mazars means that the entire deal he made with the federal government was always based on false reporting.
On Tuesday, Trump’s own accounting firm released a letter saying that they had “reached the point such that there is a non-waivable conflict of interest with the Trump Organization. As a result, we are not able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization.”
In addition to firing Trump as a client, Mazars USA also declared that the last 10 years' worth of financial records should “no longer be relied upon.” In other words, they had been producing accounting information they couldn’t stand behind, because Trump was providing Mazars with false information.
Garbage in, garbage out.
With the word that Trump’s financial data cannot be trusted, the House Oversight Committee has asked the General Services Administration to consider simply terminating Trump’s deal for the D.C. hotel—no lease, no $375 million.
As CNBC reports, the data that the GSA used in selecting Trump’s company to receive the lease on the Old Post Office Building was based precisely on those reports furnished by Mazars—the reports that are now known to be false because Trump was feeding the accountants bad information. The information the GSA used also included at least three years of records before the decade that Mazars officially disowned, but there’s no reason to believe that data was any more accurate.
House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney made the position clear in a letter to the GSA. “We request that you consider terminating the Old Post Office Building lease to former President Trump and the Trump Organization under the authority provided in Article 27 of the lease, and end, once-and-for-all, the grave damage this inappropriate lease has done to presidential ethics and integrity in government contracting.”
The GSA was already involved in Trump’s plans to sell the lease on the property, with experts noting that the selling price “appears to represent a significant premium over market rates.”
If Trump were to sell at that price, it would result in a net $76 million profit, wiping out the losses form his mismanagement of the hotel. But if the lease is simply pulled for cause … it’s lose all the way down.