Trump hid over $70 million in losses on D.C. hotel, House panel

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump’s luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., lost more than $70 million from 2016 to 2020, according to newly released confidential filings that his accountants submitted to the hotel’s landlord, the General Services Administration.

While the hotel was losing money, Trump’s annual financial disclosures filed with the Office of Government Ethics reported publicly only the hotel’s revenues, which added up to nearly $156.6 million.

Yet over that same period, Trump’s accounting firm, WeiserMazars LLP, disclosed in confidential reports to GSA that the hotel lost nearly $73.9 million.

According to a new report issued Friday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the effect of the discrepancy between what Trump publicly reported and what he privately disclosed was to mislead the public about the president’s financial situation.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the new report from CNBC.

The committee also alleges that Trump hid more than $20 million in loans his real estate holding company made to the struggling hotel, another attempt to conceal the true state of the president’s finances.

“Far from being a successful investment, the Trump Hotel was a failing business saddled by debt that required bailouts from President Trump’s other businesses,” the committee wrote in a letter Friday to Robin Carnahan, administrator of the General Services Administration, the federal agency that holds the lease to the underlying property of Trump’s D.C. hotel, the historic Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“In deciding to conceal the Trump Hotel’s true financial condition from federal ethics officials and the American public, President Trump hid conflicts of interest,” wrote Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Rep. Gerry Connelly, D-Va., the committee chair and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, respectively.

It’s not clear whether Trump violated any federal rules regarding the disclosure of assets and income. By reporting the revenues, and omitting the losses, Trump appears to have abided by the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

The committee also revealed that Trump received an unreported and surprising loan modification from Deutsche Bank halfway into his presidency, one that potentially saved the then-president and his struggling company tens of millions of dollars.

Deutsche Bank’s U.S. subsidiary loaned Trump $170 million in 2015 to finance the renovation and operation of the hotel. Under the terms of that loan, Trump was supposed to begin paying down the principal in 2018.

But according to the committee’s…