Trump Concludes First Term Having Routed Hundreds Of Official Functions Through Hotels And Resorts He Personally Owns, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Presidency And The Family Business Were Being Run As Separate Enterprises

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Closing the books on a four-year term Wednesday, the Trump administration confirmed that it had successfully routed hundreds of official functions, taxpayer-funded trips, and foreign-government bookings through hotels, golf clubs, and resorts personally owned by the President, resolving a long-standing concern that the presidency and the family business were still being operated as two separate enterprises.

According to records compiled by government watchdog groups over the full term, the President spent more than 270 days of his presidency at properties carrying his own name, an arrangement officials described as the natural result of a man who governs best from venues where he also collects the greens fees. The Trump International Hotel in Washington, leased from the federal government and located a short walk from the White House, became the preferred lodging of lobbyists, Republican committees, and foreign delegations seeking a room rate that doubled as a line of communication. Mar-a-Lago, the Florida club the President took to calling the Winter White House, doubled its initiation fee to $200,000 within weeks of the election, a figure aides characterized as the market correcting for proximity to power.

"I have a no-conflict situation because I'm President," Trump explained during the term, repeating a position he had stated many times, namely that the President of the United States is legally incapable of having a conflict of interest, and that any appearance of one is therefore a clerical error on the part of the observer. White House officials noted that this interpretation had the advantage of resolving every ethics question in advance and at no cost to the President.

To address concerns about self-dealing, the President placed his assets in a trust managed by his two adult sons, an instrument that allowed him to draw money from the business at any time while technically not running it. "The President is fully separated from the Trump Organization, with the exception of owning all of it and benefiting from all of it," said one administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the arrangement is best appreciated quickly. "The trust is revocable, which is the legal term for a wall you can walk through."

Multiple lawsuits alleging that the President was violating the Constitution's emoluments clauses, the provisions barring a president from accepting payments from foreign and domestic governments, advanced through the federal courts for the entirety of the term. The Supreme Court resolved the matter in January 2021 by declaring the cases moot, on the grounds that the President was about to stop being the President, a remedy legal scholars praised for arriving exactly one term too late to apply to anything.

At press time, the outgoing President was reviewing a final expense report confirming that the United States Secret Service, while protecting him at his own properties, had paid his own company for the rooms.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who held the presidency and the deed to the President's preferred lodging at the same time, and collected on both.
§The Trump International Hotel in Washington, which converted a federal lease into the capital's busiest waiting room for anyone with business before the government.
§Mar-a-Lago, which doubled its initiation fee to $200,000 the moment its owner became the one person a $200,000 introduction was worth paying for.
§The Trump golf clubs at Bedminster and Doral, which hosted official travel, foreign guests, and a President who treated the visits as both governance and a site inspection.
§The Trump Organization, which spent four years billing the federal government, political committees, and foreign delegations without the inconvenience of its proprietor recusing himself.
§Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, named trustees of a revocable trust that kept the President's name off the paperwork and his hand on the account.
§Foreign governments including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which learned that the surest route to the President's good opinion ran through his front desk.
§Lobbyists and Republican committees, who discovered that the price of access was now itemized, with tax included.
§The United States Secret Service, technically, in that its agents always had somewhere to stay, those rooms invoiced to the taxpayer and payable to the President they were guarding.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment