Trump will sell a historic DC property for a whopping $375 million

Donald Trump’s prized possession in Washington, DC, the Trump International Hotel, may soon cease to bear his name.

The Trump family’s hotel company has reached an agreement to sell the rights to the famous hotel to an investment group for $375 million, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal.

CGI Merchant Group, a Miami-based investment firm, is entering into a contract to purchase a hotel lease. The investment firm is currently working on a deal with Hilton Worldwide Holdings, which will brand and manage the properties of Hilton’s Waldorf Astoria group. So Trump’s name will be out of the hotel.

The sale comes as no surprise after the Trump Organization began pitching the idea in 2019.

“Since we opened, we’ve had tremendous interest in this property and as property developers we’re always open to exploring our options, ” Eric Trump, one of Donald Trump’s sons, said in a statement in October 2019, WSJ reported.

Initially, however, the company hoped to raise at least $500 million for the lease. So the current $375 million price tag is a 25% drop from the original hope.

But those high hopes are in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic taking its toll on the economy, Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election and a new Democratic committee probe into possible conflicts of interest. out and Trump’s property issues.

Trump did face lawsuits about the possibility that he violated federal monument law. But after Biden took office, Supreme Court concealed those cases on the pretext that it was irrelevant because he was no longer an elected official, according to Related press.

But the Democrats House did not stop investigating.

In October, the House Oversight and Reform Committee speak that the former president concealed the fact that his hotel suffered a net loss of $70 million.

Trump said the hotel made more than $150 million during his time in office.

The House committee also looked into conflicts of interest during his presidency, alleging the hotel made about $3.7 million from foreign officials staying there.

Since the hotel is owned by the federal government (it’s a historic building known as the Old Post Office) but has been leased to the Trump Organization for $250,000 per month, the lease regulation that no elected official could benefit from the hotel.

The Trump Organization clarified that it does not market the hotel to foreign government officials and furthermore it wrote checks to Treasury Department for any money it earns from foreign dignitaries.

The Trumps are even willing to start talking about a sale due to conflict of interest concerns.

“People are protesting that we make too much money from hotels and therefore we might be willing to sell,” Eric Trump said in his 2019 statement.

In 2020, hotel revenue dropped to $15 million, affected like many other hotels due to epidemic.

Despite a downward trend in revenue, if the sale is successful, the Trump Organization will still have made a significant profit from the hotel since its opening in 2016.

“[I]It looks like Trump is going to make a sizable profit from the sale,” New York Times reported.

But the Oversight and Reform Commission is determined to continue looking into the matter, although the sale to CGI Merchant Group appears to be pending.

A spokeswoman told the WSJ that the committee will continue to investigate the “conflict of interest and potential constitutional violations caused by the federal government Donald Trump’s lease of this hotel from the federal government while he was President.” system. That will not be completely solved by selling off this hotel. “