Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee obtained guest logs detailing the stays from Trump’s accounting firm, prompting accusations that Trump violated a constitutional prohibition on accepting funds from federal and state governments.
The Secret Service, one of the top contributors to that figure, routinely paid more than other hotel guests during their stays to protect various Trump family members.
In less than a year, the agency paid more than $70,000 to stay at the Washington hotel.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both White House staffers, also spent around $6,000 to stay at the Washington hotel, even as his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were not charged for their stays. The documents did not specify whether they or the government paid the bill.
“While this is an exceedingly small window into the opaque web of more than 500 corporations, limited liability companies, and trusts that Donald Trump carried with him into the presidency, it is enough to reveal hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments he accepted while in office from domestic sources,” Democrats write in their 58-page report.
Many of the payments accepted by the hotel appear to violate the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which stipulates that a president cannot accept payment, outside of his salary, from elsewhere in the federal government or from a state.
“Trump used his hotel to fleece the American taxpayer to line his own pockets in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch has more here.
