Tag: citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington
Washington Bids Farewell To Trump Hotel That Offered Luxury...And Access

Washington 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 should never have been allowed to keep his DC hotel as president," CREW's head Noah Bookbinder said.

"He should have divested himself of it along with the rest of his businesses before taking office. Instead, he rode out four years of using it for influence peddling and constitutional violations."

Altogether, domestic political groups spent $3 million at the hotel across some 40 political events during the Trump era.

Special interest groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute, often took part in White House meetings alongside a hotel event, and many secured favorable policy outcomes, according to CREW.

AFP reached out to the Trump Organization, but there was no response.

The former president handed control of his businesses to his two adult sons and a trustee when he entered the White House, promising not to get involved while in reality promoting the venues at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization pledged to donate its profits from foreign governments to the US Treasury.

Built in the 1890s, the 12-story Old Post Office that houses the Trump International is the third-tallest building in the capital, after the Washington Monument and National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

$12,000 Per Night

Scheduled for demolition several times, it was bailed out in 2011 when Trump pipped Hilton and Hyatt with a bid pledging to sink $200 million into a makeover.

The hotel opened in the fall of 2016, a few months before Trump entered the White House, effectively making the new president his own landlord, in violation of a provision banning elected officials from "any share" of the lease.

A review of rates by AFP found the least expensive room around the end of November would cost $512 per night. A night in the Franklin Suite, including breakfast in bed, was on offer for a cool $12,109.98.

But the sky-high prices did not translate into profit.

Investigators in Congress found the hotel lost more than $70 million during Trump's presidency, concluding that he had "grossly exaggerated" its profits.

The Trump Organization called the report "intentionally misleading, irresponsible and unequivocally false" and described it as "political harassment."

But reports in US media have chronicled low occupancy as the Trump International has struggled to contend with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Trump Organization sold the lease for a reported $375 million to an investment fund, which plans to reopen the hotel in the first months of 2022 as a Waldorf Astoria.

"The Trump Hotel DC stood as a bright neon sign telling foreign countries and moneyed interests how to bribe the president and a stark reminder to Americans that his decisions as president were just as likely to be about his bottom line as about our interests," CREW's Bookbinder added.

"Selling it now that he's out of office and the grift dried up is, to say the least, too little, too late."

Mike Pence, coronavirus

Watchdog Group: Top Pence Aide Has ‘Conflicting Financial Interests’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

As Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short — according to analysis by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — appears to be playing a prominent role in the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. And CREW reports that Short might be doing so "while holding significant conflicting financial interests."

In an article posted on CREW's website on Thursday, Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics), and researcher Meredith Lerner explain: "The financial disclosure report [Short] filed when he entered government in March 2019 shows he may own stocks in companies directly affected by the pandemic response that the vice president's office is leading. The companies whose stocks he listed in his disclosure include manufacturers of drugs, medical tests, medical devices, medical instruments, personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, antiseptics, airplanes and airplane parts. They also include a major consumer goods retailer, the parent company of Google, and for-profit managed healthcare companies."

Read NowShow less
Multiple Lawsuits Filed Against Trump’s ‘National Emergency’ Gambit

Multiple Lawsuits Filed Against Trump’s ‘National Emergency’ Gambit

UPDATE: 

A coalition of 16 states filed suit on President’s Day to block Trump’s plan to build a border wall without Congressional authorization, seeking to enjoin him from seizing funds under the guise of a “national emergency,” which they argue is unconstitutional.

Brought by a group of Democratic governors — plus the Republican governor of Maryland — the filing asks the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to issue a preliminary injunction against the president that would bar him \ from acting on his emergency declaration before the case is decided.

Trump is already facing at least two lawsuits over his unnecessary wall, and there are more on the way.

Even before he officially declared a national emergency in an unhinged rant, it was clear that there were going to be lawsuits. Yes, plural.

And it isn’t like he didn’t know he’d get sued. He said so Friday, when he announced the emergency. He also said that he “didn’t need to do this,” a statement that somewhat undercut his assertion there was an emergency.

Now, there are two lawsuits and the promise of at least one more, and that doesn’t include the fact that the House Judiciary Committee has already said they are going to investigate as well.

The first two lawsuits came from public interest groups. On Friday — the same day the “emergency” was announced — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the Department of Justice (DOJ). Their lawsuit alleges that the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) didn’t provide any documents that explain the legal authority Trump has to make the national emergency declaration.

CREW had requested those documents from DOJ back in early January and also requested an expedited review given that everyone has a significant interest in knowing, sooner rather than later, the underlying legal basis for Trump declaring a national emergency. The OLC denied expedited review and told CREW that they wouldn’t even make the normal deadline of 20 working days. So, CREW sued to get those documents.

The American people shouldn’t be in the dark about a matter as important as this. CREW’s lawsuit seeks to shed some light by asking the court to order the DOJ to provide those documents, including legal opinions, immediately.

Friday’s other lawsuit was filed by Public Citizen on behalf of Texas landowners and an environmental group. The landowners are people who have been informed that the wall will be built on their property.

Taking their property to build the wall is theoretically permissible under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which allows the government to exercise eminent domain and take private property for public use. However, conservatives are generally virulently opposed to such a thing.

Trump likes the idea just fine though.

Public Citizen’s lawsuit isn’t just about the taking of land. It also challenges the idea that there is a national emergency at all. Migration at the southern border is not an unforeseen emergency, for example. And most important of all: “[A] disagreement between the President and Congress about how to spend money does not constitute an emergency authorizing unilateral executive action.”

And there’s another lawsuit getting teed up. California announced on Friday that they’re planning on suing. It looks like several other states — including Hawaii, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Oregon — will join the suit.

Trump may be confident that he’ll find a sympathetic ear at the Supreme Court that he’s already stacked with two extremely conservative judges, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. With Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, there are, regrettably, five votes to back Trump’s most absurd and vicious impulses. That’s exactly what they did in the travel ban case.

Here’s hoping that Chief Justice John Roberts’ desire to maintain the independence of the judicial branch comes through and Trump eventually gets told he can’t use a national emergency to get his pointless wall.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

They’re Coming For Your Taxes, Donnie

They’re Coming For Your Taxes, Donnie

It’s almost April 15 and the American people want Donald Trump’s receipts.

On the second Saturday in April, organizers are planning marches in Washington, D.C. and dozens of other cities across the U.S. to call on the president to release his tax returns. Given the improving weather and polls that suggest that about 3 out of 4 Americans want to see Donnie’s tax returns, these marches will likely mark the second largest protests of the new, but seemingly endless, Trump Administration.

House Republicans have blocked five recent efforts from the Democratic side of the aisle to force the release of Trump’s returns — the latest being a party-line vote in the House Ways and Means Committee against a measure that would have directed the Treasury Department to provide the lower house of Congress with his returns, along with other financial information from the president.

Why?

That’s the question I keep asking myself, considering that even many Republican voters continue to tell pollsters that they want more transparency (and less tweeting) from the Commander-in-Tweet.

GOP “media guy” and compulsive Trump critic Rick Wilson keeps trying to remind his fellow Republicans of the possibly irreparable consequences of standing by a president who at least seems content to appear as if he is hiding multiple cancers on his presidency.

“In 1974, the GOP lost 49 House and 8 Senate seats,” Wilson tweeted. “They were branded as defending a corrupt, criminal Presidency.”

So why not try to get ahead of the crooked curve a bit and say you’re doing it because you’re sure the president has nothing to hide? Then, either way, you made the right call. Heck, you could even note that you’re just getting on board with a promise that Trump made dozens of times during the campaign.

Richard Painter was the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush Administration from 2005 to 2007. Currently, he’s the vice chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and teaches law at the University of Minnesota/Twin Cities, where he will be a speaker at Tax March MN, calling for an end to dark money in politics in addition to the tax documents from Trump that every president since Richard Nixon has released.

I asked Professor Painter why nearly all elected Republicans refuse to join the American people in demanding basic transparency. His answer is simple: Fear.

“They don’t want to get a primary challenge,” he told me.

It’s a fear that’s grounded in reality.

Trump’s social media guru unabashedly called for a primary challenge of Freedom Caucus member Rep. Justin Amash on Saturday. And Rep. Mark Sanford told The Post and Courier of Charleston that Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, came to him and said, “‘The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on [the American Health Care Act] so he could run [a primary challenger] against you in 2018.”

Coincidentally, Sanford is one of two House Republicans who have publicly called for Trump to release his tax returns.

Painter told me that the fear is visible on Capitol Hill.

“Last Thursday, they had a hearing on some other government transparency issues,” he told me. “The minute I start bringing up Trump, and the Democrats were asking me questions, the Republicans were all ducking out of the hearing. They had three separate Republicans handle the gavel just to chair this thing. None of them wanted to be in the room. They don’t want to argue with me. Not a single Republican wanted to argue with me about a single thing I had to say about Trump.”

And Painter has had a lot to say about Trump.

In a Los Angeles Times‘ op-ed, he explained exactly why Trump’s returns are so crucial to finding out who the president might be beholden to, including foreign interests. He believes that in addition to using its subpoena powers to get Trump’s tax returns, Congress should amend Form 278, which is required of all presidential candidates, “to require more disclosure of debts, capital infusions and revenues of corporations, LLCs and other entities controlled by high-ranking office holders,” who are subject to conflict of interest laws.

Only Republicans currently have the power to subpoena Trump’s tax returns and the professor believes that pressure on GOP reps back in their districts as the 2018 election nears may result in increasing, yet quiet, calls for an independent investigation and even a possible demand for Trump’s returns.

Painter is also part of the legal team suing Trump over violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. But that level of corruption is minor compared to what he thinks the president or his associates may be hiding when it comes to possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, which he believes could be the biggest scandal in American politics in at least half a century.

“This scandal is much more dangerous than Watergate because Watergate didn’t involve foreign adversaries conducting spying activities in the United States,” he told me. “That was a break-in by some low-class burglars who weren’t even any good at being burglars, whereas the break-in here at the DNC was a very sophisticated operation.”

The release of Trump’s tax returns would indicate that the president takes this scandal seriously instead of going into what Painter calls “coverup mode.”

Transparency is the demand and Painter believes it’s necessary for politics to help ordinary people.

“I’m concerned with the ethics of this administration,” he told me, when I asked why he decided to participate in the march. “I’m concerned with the ethics of Washington in general. We need to get the campaign finance system cleaned up because that affects both political parties.”

But first we have the small matter of figuring out if the president or anyone around him might have committed some high crimes and/or misdemeanors.

“There is some evidence that there was somebody in the United States collaborating with the Russians at the time the Russians were conducting a spying activity and then selectively disseminating some of the information they discovered through Wikileaks. And there were some Americans, apparently, who were collaborating with that,” he told me. “I do describe that as treason.”

These are serious charges. And Trump continues to fuel the speculation by acting is if he has more to hide in his tax returns than Al Capone ever did.