US bids farewell to Trump hotel that offered luxury… and access
Washington (AFP) – Occupying an entire city block a short walk from the White House, the Trump International Hotel is a splashy neolassical palace steeped in more than a century of Washington lore.
The towering atrium features a huge skylight that dapples the lobby bar in winter sun as the nation’s power brokers savor $140 glasses of wine served in Hungarian crystal, or $10,000 tumblers of vintage Macallan scotch.
After a drink, guests with $385 to spare can rejuvenate with a “hydrafacial” skin treatment downstairs before reclining on designer linens in one of the 263 stately, wood-paneled rooms.
“It’s a beautiful place,” one-time White House spokesman Sean Spicer gushed about the hotel, which is set to become a Waldorf Astoria in the New Year, ending six years of ownership by Donald Trump.
“It’s somewhere that he’s very proud of, and I think it’s symbolic of the kind of government that he’s going to run.”
Spicer turned out to be correct.
Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington, but instead opened his very own quagmire on Pennsylvania Avenue — inviting a dizzying array of conflicts of interest.
During Trump’s four years in office, the 19th-century Romanesque Revival-style hotel became a magnet for top donors, corporate lobbyists and foreign governments seeking to spend big in the hope of winning influence.
“The law is totally on my side, meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest,” Trump said in 2016 when asked about mixing his day job with promoting his sprawling business empire.
‘Influence peddling’
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) lobby group tracked 150 officials from 77 foreign governments that visited a Trump property during his presidency.
According to a congressional probe, the Washington hotel took in $3.7 million from countries including China, Kuwait, Turkey, India, Brazil and Romania.
The Philippines told a television station back home its decision to use the hotel for a 2018 Independence Day celebration was “a statement that we have a good relationship with this president.”
The clientele raised concerns about possible violations of anti-corruption provisions written by the nation’s founders restricting the acceptance of gifts to office-holders from foreigners.
“Donald Trump…
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