Trump Hotel Markets Rooms To Foreign Diplomats Seeking Favor With Administration

President-Elect Stands To Profit From Arrangement, Will Be Exempt From Ethics Laws

In a blatant conflict of interest, President-elect Donald Trump’s new Washington, D.C. hotel is marketing rooms to foreign diplomats looking to curry favor with his incoming administration. 

The Washington Post reports that the Trump International Hotel — in the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue that the president-elect’s company leases from the federal government — staged a reception for the diplomatic community on Tuesday, one week after the election.

Several diplomats who attended the reception told the Post that spending money at the hotel is “an easy, friendly gesture to the new president.”  

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’” one Asian diplomat said. “Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” 

The arrangement violates no ethics laws because the president is exempt from rules barring federal employees from profiting from their positions.

Trump has said he plans to place his business interests in a “blind trust” run by his three oldest children. However, his children are also on his presidential transition team and reportedly will serve as unpaid national security advisers to skirt nepotism rules. 

Watchdog groups are calling on Trump to liquidate his assets or set up true blind trust run by an independent agent who is not a family member.  

“Failure to follow this course of action will create conflicts of interest of unprecedented magnitude,” the groups wrote in a letter to the president-elect this week. 

Read the full story here.