But some potential guests expressed frustration after being called to say their reservation had been cancelled. “They just make everyone stiff,” said Jayson Woodbridge, a California winemaker who made a reservation for a week-long stay at the hotel to attend his daughter’s graduation in the area.
Last week, Mickael Damelincourt, the hotel’s longtime manager, went from table to table to greet some of the regulars in the lobby bar, pausing to take photos with some of them prior to the hotel’s sale. The property’s BLT Prime restaurant was already permanently closed, as was the Ivanka Trump spa, and the hotel itself was no longer taking room reservations.
Just days before the sale was closed, the Trump Organization and Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee agreed in 2017 to settle a lawsuit filed by Karl A. Racine, the District Attorney General of the District of Columbia, who alleged that the hotel had received unlawfully excessive payments from the inaugural commission, totaling more than $1 million.
The civil suit settlement came without admission of wrongdoing by the Trump Organization, the former president, or the inaugural commission.
Those allegations were among many allegations in several lawsuits that Mr. Trump improperly profited from the presidency through payments to the hotel by lobbyists and foreign governments, among others. Lawsuits from the state of Maryland and Democratic members of Congress cited the constitution’s emoluments clauses, which prohibit federal officials from accepting financial benefits from foreign governments without congressional approval.
The Trump family has paid the federal government a basic rent of $3 million a year for the old post office building, under the 2013 lease. renovations is paid off, according to House Democrats estimates.
The contract with the federal government that the Trump Organization signed called for the company to share a portion of its profits with the government if the hotel were to be sold. But a Trump Organization executive said the way the lease was written—allowing the Trump family to earn a 20 percent annual return on equity put into the hotel project—meaning there probably wouldn’t be much of such profit-sharing. to be.
