The Trump Inauguration’s ‘Unconscionable Contract’

Reporters Ilya Marritz and Justin Elliott have been reporting on Trump's inauguration since 2018. They looked at how the inaugural committee raised a record $107 million (and the big questions behind where that money went) and examined the role Ivanka Trump played in negotiations over space at the Trump International Hotel, located just blocks from the White House.

Those negotiations, first reported by Trump, Inc. in 2019, are now the subject of a civil suit filed by the District of Columbia’s attorney general. “Members of the Trump family were aware of and involved in the negotiation of this unconscionable contract,” D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine wrote in the complaint charging the Trump inaugural committee and the Trump Organization with using around $1 million of charitable funds to improperly enrich the Trump family, filed Wednesday, January 22.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization dismissed the D.C. suit in an emailed statement: “The AG’s claims are false, intentionally misleading and riddled with inaccuracies. The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that [sic] hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue. The AG’s after the fact attempt to regulate what discounts it believes the hotel should have provided as well as the timing of this complaint reeks of politics and is a clear PR stunt.”

This episode of Trump, Inc. was originally released on February 20, 2019.