Miami-based CGI Merchant is partnering with Hilton to turn the Pennsylvania Avenue property into a Waldorf Astoria hotel, ending a more than five-year run in which the hotel became a power center in Trump’s Washington and a symbol of how he mixed business and politics like no other president in history.
With Trump in office, the hotel served as both a central gathering place for Republicans and a background for mass protests opposing his presidency and policies. After signing a lease with the General Services Administration for the property in 2013, he hung an enormous blue-and-white banner on Pennsylvania Avenue: “TRUMP,” it said, “Coming 2016.” Construction was finished almost as his presidential campaign wrapped up, and the hotel opened within weeks of his election win.
Trump held on to the lease despite a series of lawsuits and constitutional challenges led by Democratic leaders. The GSA — through the final months of President Barack Obama’s second term, the entirety of Trump’s own term, and more than a year of President Biden’s — never took action against Trump despite abarring any “elected official of the government of the United States” from deriving “any benefit” from the arrangement.
Holding on to the contract will now afford Trump an enormous payday. Trump won the lease deal from the GSA after committing to spend $200 million developing the property. Critics scoffed at the price, which was far higher than other companies were willing to pay.
Deutsh Bank has a shady history .
Follow the money. Find the con
Who is General Racine?
CGI Merchant Group should wait until the Feds cancel his lease and then purchase it for peanuts. Or they could buy it from New York after AG James seizes all trump org properties nationwide.
Place will need a big-time Clorox soak.
They're going to spend a fortune in Raid and Lysol. Nasty.
Won again. Beat cornball AGKarlRacine.