Malaysian PM gets VIP treatment at Trump Hotel
Another day, another emoluments violation.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-trump-hotel-lobby-to-white-house-malaysian-prime-minister-gets-vip-treatment/2017/09/12/1b296f54-97d1-11e7-87fc-c3f7ee4035c9_story.html?utm_term=.03fb6f2aabba&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
"Before arriving at the White House late Tuesday morning to meet with President Trump, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak strode through the golden doors of an elevator at the Trump International Hotel and past the lounge to his waiting motorcade.
The prime minister’s official White House visit also brought at least 24 hours of activity and sales to the glamorous 263-room hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue that Trump owns through a trust. And it is likely to escalate debate over whether the president is benefiting from a luxury property that has become Washington’s new power center — and, its critics say, a staging area for those seeking White House access."
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On Tuesday morning, dozens of delegation members convened in meeting rooms with name cards bearing the Malaysian coat of arms. Some attended a white-tablecloth breakfast in the hotel’s Lincoln Library meeting room.
Events of this scale would probably mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for the Trump Organization, based on confirmed spending totals of other groups that have set up camp there. The company declined to comment.
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Ethics experts, citing the Constitution’s emoluments clause, consider foreign government bookings at the hotel unacceptable. Though it has hosted hotel events for many foreign entities, as well as lobbying-group events and Republican fundraisers, the Trump Organization says it does not seek foreign governments as clients, keeps a separate log of their payments and plans to donate profits it receives from them to the U.S. treasury at the end of the year.
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Trump’s invitation to Najib also has drawn scathing criticism because the United States is conducting a probe — its largest kleptocracy investigation ever — into whether the prime minister diverted more than $1 billion from a Malaysian-government investment fund to his own bank accounts."... .(more)
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