US State Dept Is Telling Foreign Leaders to Stay in Trump’s DC Hotel, Former Mexican Ambassador Charges

‘Kakistocracy’

A former Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. says the U.S. Dept. of State is instructing foreign leaders around the world to stay in President Donald Trump’s new D.C. hotel, the Old Post Office, when traveling to Washington on official business.

ThinkProgress Justice Editor Ian Millhiser, who first reported the accusation, says Arturo Sarukhán “tweeted on Tuesday that a former U.S. diplomat told him the U.S. State Department’s protocol emphasizes to world leaders that they should use Trump’s D.C. hotel for official visits.”

Sarukhan, who was the Mexican Ambassador from 2007-2013, today has various fellowship positions at top DC think tanks, including the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Brookings Institution, and the USC/Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy.

In his tweet he uses the term “Kakistocracy,” which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as “Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.”

ThinkProgress also notes these actions would be not only illegal, but unconstitutional.

If the State Department is, in fact, helping Trump drive foreign governments’ business to his hotels, then it is complicit in a violation of the Constitution. The Constitution provides that no “person holding any office of profit or trust” under the United States may “without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

This would not be the first time similar accusations about Trump’s hotels have been made.

RELATED: ‘Kakistocracy’: Defining the New Trump Era

In April, several U.S. State Dept. social media accounts actively promoted Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club and resort, under the guise of it being “the Winter White House,” which it is not. It is a business privately owned by Trump.

Just ten days after the November election The Washington Post reported “For foreign diplomats, Trump hotel is place to be.” The article began:

About 100 foreign diplomats, from Brazil to Turkey, gathered at the Trump International Hotel this week to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.

In March, former DC ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis told the AP, “President Trump is in effect inviting people and companies and countries to channel money to him through the hotel.”

She said the “pay to play” danger is even greater than it would be if people wanted to donate to a campaign to influence a politician’s thinking. Spending money at a Trump property “is about personally enriching Donald Trump, who happens to be the president of the United States.”

The Washington Post this past August also reported Trump’s D.C. hotel ended its first four months with a $1.97 million profit. It was expected to lose $2.1 million during that time period.

To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page.

Image by Ted Eytan via Flickr and a CC license

If you find NCRM valuable, would you please consider making a donation to support our independent journalism?