Democrats’ Report Calls Trump Hotel Business Unethical and Unconstitutional

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the former president overcharged the Secret Service and accepted money from officials and people who were seeking pardons and appointments.

House Democrats on Friday accused former President Donald J. Trump of accepting “hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments” through the Trump International Hotel in 2017 and 2018, moving weeks before the election to remind voters of the ethical issues raised by his refusal to divest from his businesses while in office.

The 58-page report from Democrats on the Oversight Committee includes their final findings in a yearslong investigation digging into the Trump Organization’s management of the hotel. It accuses Mr. Trump of ripping off the Secret Service by charging the agency exorbitant rates and of inappropriately accepting payments from clients who worked for state governments or were seeking appointments and pardons from him.

“Mr. Trump has made clear that he will not only refuse to divest from his businesses in a possible future presidency, but he will seek to multiply opportunities to commodify the Oval Office for his personal enrichment by turning thousands of civil service jobs into patronage positions — all with the attendant payoff possibilities from supplicant job-seekers and the prospective blessing of his handpicked Supreme Court justices,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee.

House Republicans dismissed the report as old news and accused Democrats of hypocrisy for investigating Mr. Trump but not members of President Biden’s family, including his son Hunter.

“Unlike the Bidens, the Trumps actually have businesses and made money from the services they provided,” said Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for the Republican-led House Oversight Committee. “Today’s report is more recycled garbage from the Democrats’ fruitless and close to a decadelong investigation of President Trump.”

The committee has already documented how officials from other countries spent lavishly at Mr. Trump’s hotel in Washington while he was president and how the Secret Service was charged hefty prices for rooms.

Eric Trump, the former president’s son, has repeatedly claimed the organization charged the Secret Service a discounted rate. He has also said that any profit the company earned on the hotel stays from foreign officials was returned to the federal government through a voluntary annual payment to the Treasury Department. The Trump Organization has also said it did not have the ability to stop anyone from booking through third parties at the hotel.

But the report seeks to undercut those statements.

“Not only did President Trump’s hotel often charge the Secret Service far more than authorized federal government rates, the hotel also charged the agency far more than hundreds of other patrons, including members of a foreign royal family and a Chinese business interest,” the report states.

Democrats on the panel previously found the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents protecting former Mr. Trump and his family.

The latest report compares how much the Secret Service was charged at the hotel on the same nights as other guests.

For example, it says that on Nov. 28, 2017, the Secret Service approved a waiver to pay a room rate of $600 when the per diem for that month was $201 — a 300-percent markup. Room records show that a dozen rooms were rented that same night to the Inner Mongolia Yitai Coal Co. Ltd., which is headquartered in China, for a lower rate: $338.85 each.

The report also analyzes payments made by federal and state officials staying at the hotel, as well as people who sought — and obtained — favors from Mr. Trump, including federal jobs in his administration and presidential pardons. In just 11 months of the Trump hotel’s guest logs, the committee found 16 examples of state or federal officials who paid for rooms there, often while on official travel. The committee said such room rentals possibly violated the Constitution’s domestic emoluments clause if any taxpayer funds were used.

Democrats identified eight ambassadors; three people appointed by Mr. Trump to be federal judges; two governors; one delegation from a state legislature; and two executive branch officials who stayed at the hotel during the 11 months analyzed.

In addition, five people who sought and received presidential pardons — Elliott Broidy, Ken Kurson, Dinesh D’Souza, James Kassouf and Albert Pirro — stayed at the hotel, the report found. Together, they spent more than $21,000.

Democrats on the committee acknowledge that many of the transactions documented in the report were not for eye-popping dollar figures; their cumulative total was about $300,000.

The report also acknowledges its own limitations. Democrats fought aggressively through years of litigation to gain access to only a portion of Mr. Trump’s business records. After they won court rulings, Mazars USA, the longtime accounting firm for Mr. Trump that cut ties with him and his family business, began turning over documents in 2022 related to his financial dealings.

But once Republicans won control of Congress, they dropped the effort to force Mazars to continue with its production of documents about Mr. Trump’s business dealings.