The attorney general for Washington, D.C., is suing the president’s inaugural committee on accusations that it misused funds at the president’s hotel in the city.
In a complaint filed on Wednesday, the District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine claims that the inaugural committee — which is a nonprofit — abused its nonprofit status by wasting “approximately $1 million of charitable funds in overpayment for the use of event space at the Trump Hotel, owned and controlled by the Trump Entities.”
The complaint names former Trump aide Rick Gates as agreeing with the Trump Hotel to pay $175,000 per day during the four days surrounding the inauguration. Racine says that the charges were “unreasonable and improperly served to enrich the Trump Entities.” Gates famously flipped on President Donald Trump during the Mueller investigation and was sentenced to 45 days in prison.
Racine says that on the days that the inaugural committee paid for the space, they didn’t use it and that other organizations actually used the space that the committee had reserved. He also said that, during the week of the inauguration, another nonprofit paid $5,000 for the space.
The complaint alleges that people within the inaugural committee objected to the prices that the Trump Hotel was charging and that they voiced these concerns with Gates but that he continued to negotiate with the inflated prices.
Later in the complaint, Racine writes that “the Prayer Breakfast paid only $5,000 to rent the Presidential Ballroom, the largest event space in the Trump Hotel, on the morning of the Inauguration. In contrast, the [Presidential Inaugural Committee] paid $175,000 for the use of the Presidential Ballroom in the afternoon.”
In a tweet, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — which has frequently highlighted the president’s conflicts of interest — noted that the ballroom was “overpriced and barely used.”
BREAKING: @AGKarlRacine just sued President Trump’s inaugural committee and business, saying that it violated its nonprofit status by spending more than $1 million to book a ballroom at Trump’s DC hotel that was overpriced and barely used.https://t.co/3GDv34TEZT
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) January 22, 2020
This is hardly the first time that the president’s inaugural committee has come under scrutiny. In early 2019, the New York attorney general subpoenaed the committee for documents after reports that the committee misspent some of the money from donors.
