Investment group purchases Trump hotel in DC and is expected to remove Trump name
CNN
By Kara Scannell
The Trump Organization has reached a deal with the investment fund CGI Merchant Group to purchase the lease for the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, for $375 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Miami group is expected to remove the Trump name from the ornate building located a short walk from the White House and is partnering with Hilton Worldwide Holdings to brand it a Waldorf Astoria, according to the person familiar. The deal is subject to approval by the General Services Administration (GSA), which will conduct a 60-day review, because the federal government owns the property.
The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the deal.
The CGI Merchant Group declined to comment to CNN. CNN has reached out to the Trump Organization for comment.
Former President Donald Trump’s company had been in advanced talks with CGI Merchant Group this fall to sell the lease of the hotel, CNN previously reported.
Last month, the House Oversight Committee released documents showing the DC property, which attracted conservative lobbyists throughout the Trump presidency, lost $70 million while he was in office. (The former President had publicly claimed the hotel was making more than tens of millions of dollars.) The company has been trying to sell the property since 2019 but paused last year when the pandemic all but shuttered the hospitality industry.
The GSA, which manages federal buildings and land, awarded the lease for the Old Post Office building in 2012. Trump opened the hotel in 2016, when he was the Republican nominee for president.
Since then, the House Oversight Committee had been investigating conflicts of interest regarding GSA’s management of the Trump hotel lease.
When he took office, Trump resigned from his companies but transferred his assets to a trust run by his sons, allowing him to still benefit financially from the DC hotel and his other businesses.
In 2019, the inspector general of the GSA said the agency “ignored the Constitution” when deciding to maintain the lease of the building to the hotel after Trump was elected to the White House.
The documents released by the Oversight Committee showed the hotel received millions from foreign governments in payments and loan deferral, which Trump did not disclose, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest during his presidency.
The disclosure marked the first time that congressional investigators had reviewed and released details of the former President’s financial information, though the Trump Organization had challenged the committee’s understanding of accounting and denied any wrongdoing.
The-CNN-Wire
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