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    Trump Hotel Lost Money, Despite Lobbyist Spending, Documents Show

    House investigators released data revealing that the hotel in Washington lost $74 million from 2016 to 2020, a figure disputed by the Trump Organization.WASHINGTON — Despite all the Republican-paid political events and big bar tabs from lobbyists, foreign dignitaries and other supporters of President Donald J. Trump, the Trump International Hotel in Washington lost an estimated $74 million between 2016 and 2020, according to data released on Friday by House investigators.The tally came from Mr. Trump’s own auditors, showing losses that generally increased through his tenure in the White House, even as Mr. Trump’s annual financial disclosure reports showed revenues of more than $40 million a year, at least until the pandemic hit.The new account of revenues and annual losses at the hotel — which is in a federally owned landmark known as the Old Post Office building — was released as House Democrats push the Biden administration to turn over additional documents to determine if Mr. Trump broke federal rules by continuing to operate the hotel through his family while serving as president.“The documents provided by G.S.A. raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease,” said a letter sent Friday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee to the General Services Administration, asking for more information.The materials released by House investigators estimated that the hotel also generated nearly $3.8 million in revenue from foreign government officials during the first three years Mr. Trump was in office, be it hotel stays or meals or other business. The president drew in foreign dignitaries who often liked to be seen at his hotel, at times even meeting with Mr. Trump’s aides at the complex.Millions more were spent by the Republican National Committee and various election campaigns and other political groups backing Republican candidates, or supporting Mr. Trump’s re-election efforts, Federal Election Commission reports show. During his presidency, the Trump hotel became a showcase of special-interest lobbying and maneuvering by allies of Mr. Trump to draw his attention or support.Still, the overall message was that the Trump International Hotel, despite all the headlines, is a money-losing operation, said David J. Sangree, an accountant who runs a firm, Hotel & Leisure Advisors, that evaluates hotel industry performance and who looked at the audited reports at the request of The New York Times.“You would expect a hotel in Washington, D.C., to earn a profit,” he said.The Trump family often has various ways of counting revenues and losses, for example presenting one set of figures suggesting losses to property tax authorities in an effort to reduce tax bills and giving another to the public that suggests higher returns reflecting well on Mr. Trump’s business acumen.Prosecutors in New York are already investigating whether Mr. Trump essentially keeps two separate sets of books: one with glowing numbers that banks and insurers received and another bleaker set of data for tax collectors.Eric Trump, who has helped run the family business since his father started his campaign for president, called the $74 million tally of losses at the hotel between 2016 and 2020 “total nonsense,” since it includes a common accounting exercise that cuts actual business profits by considering the annual depreciation of the value of the property.The revenues collected from foreign government sources, Eric Trump added, would have been much higher if the Trump family had actively worked to solicit this business. Instead, the company attempted during most of the time Mr. Trump was in office to discourage it, he said.The Trump family made annual payments to the Treasury for the Trump hotel in Washington — totaling $355,687 between 2017 and 2019 — to attempt to return profits from these sales to foreign government officials. The payments from foreign governments led to accusations in court cases that Mr. Trump was in violation of the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution, which seeks to bar federal officials from receiving payments from foreign governments.Eric Trump also disputed a suggestion by the House Oversight Committee that the Trump family had received preferential treatment from Deutsche Bank, which financed the renovation of the Old Post Office building before it reopened as a hotel. The committee questioned why the terms of loan were changed to interest-only payments in 2018, but Eric Trump said the relatively high assessed value of the hotel allowed the company to defer principal payments on the $170 million loan for several years.“They have written a narrative that is purposely false,” Eric Trump said in an interview Friday. “And they know it is false.”Former President Trump had filed annual public reports, as required under the law, providing only gross revenues from the hotel, not profits. The information released on Friday includes profitability figures calculated in a number of ways.Detailed financial reports prepared by Mr. Trump’s auditors, which were also released by the House on Friday, show a total loss of $74 million by including depreciation in the value of the hotel of about $8 million a year.But even taking out the losses from depreciation, the documents still show that year after year, once taxes, lease payments and rent paid to the federal government are factored in, the hotel still lost money. It just lost less by that standard than by the one highlighted by House Democrats on Friday.For example, the statement of operations as of August 2018 showed that the losses for the prior year were about $5.3 million, once depreciation was removed, compared with the $13.5 million loss for that year that the House committee said occurred.Losses in 2019, by this adjusted calculation, would have been $9.6 million, compared with the $17.8 million that the House Democrats cited.Mr. Sangree said the net income at the Trump hotel in Washington, even after depreciation and interest on the loan is removed from the calculation, is relatively poor compared with other luxury hotels in major cities.The financial reports released by House investigators provide once-confidential details on the operation of the hotel, showing that it earned an unusually high share of its revenues from its restaurant and bar, compared to its hotel rooms. Each category brought in about $25 million in 2018.Typically, room revenues are considerably larger than meals and bar service, Mr. Sangree said. But large crowds of lobbyists and friends of Mr. Trump’s gathered almost every night in the Trump hotel lobby while he was president, and were sometimes even greeted by Mr. Trump himself as he arrived at the hotel to have dinner at its steakhouse.Some allies of Mr. Trump were such frequent patrons of the hotel bar, like Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, that they had tables they considered their own.Still, the hotel would most likely post much higher profits under a different owner, Mr. Sangree said, because it would no longer be hard to sell to major corporations that have stayed away because of controversies related to Mr. Trump. Management costs at the hotel have also been abnormally high, he said, as a share of revenues.“This hotel should be doing better,” Mr. Sangree said, noting that the documents released Friday showed an average daily room rate of about $500, which should be high enough to produce considerable profit.The Trump family has moved twice in recent years to sell the lease it has with the federal government to operate a hotel at the site. Offers are still being considered, after about a dozen bids came in for the property, including from several major national hotel brands, one executive involved in the negotiations said.With Mr. Trump out of office, the hotel is now much less of a draw among prominent Republican players in Washington. Its lobby now often sits largely empty, as the search for a potential buyer of the lease continues. More

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    In Delaware, Biden Indulges One of His Oldest Habits: Commuting

    Still adjusting to the White House, the president sees Delaware as a place where he can be on display but still have his privacy protected.REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — Everyone here has a Biden story.Joe Mack, who owns the Double Dippers ice cream parlor, says President Biden likes to recite old Irish sayings when he comes in to grab a quart of chocolate chip. Susan Kehoe, the owner of Browseabout Books, says Mr. Biden and his dog Champ draw crowds of onlookers when they relax on one of the benches outside the store.Kathleen McGuiness, the Delaware state auditor, has a photograph on her phone of her standing next to an aviators-wearing Mr. Biden near Rehoboth Avenue, the town’s main drag.“They fit into the fabric,” Ms. McGuiness said of the president and his brood, who summered here for years before Mr. Biden bought a $2.7 million beach home in 2017 in the North Shores, a tony neighborhood one mile north of town.Before the 2020 election, the Bidens were often a fixture downtown, the former vice president often tangling up people in conversations that sometimes had no end in sight.“He wandered freely,” Mr. Mack said.As president, Mr. Biden has made it clear with public comments — he has compared life in the White House to living in a “gilded cage” — and the frequency of his travel that he is still most comfortable in Delaware, a place where he can be on display and protected all at once.The Bidens own a large home in a suburb of Wilmington, but Rehoboth, a laid-back beach town that sells French fries by the bucket and Biden-theme merchandise — including orange Gatorade-scented candles, crafted in homage to the president’s preferred drink — is one of his favorite havens. In the middle of tense negotiations with Republicans over an infrastructure package, mushrooming ransomware attacks against American companies, and plans for a coming trip to the Group of 7 summit in Europe, Mr. Biden departed for the beach to celebrate the 70th birthday of Jill Biden, the first lady.Mr. Biden’s inclination to go home to Delaware is longstanding: During his 36 years in the Senate, Mr. Biden made it a point to travel back to Wilmington to spend most evenings with his sons, a habit that began after his first wife, Neilia Biden, and young daughter, Naomi Biden, were killed in a car accident.At least for now, the Bidens have another reason: They do not yet fully trust the residence staff and security officials they did not directly hire, according to two people familiar with their thinking. (Many of the household employees are holdovers from the previous administration, which is common for new presidents.) The Bidens still have not installed a White House chief usher, who manages the residence. The Trumps’ chief usher, who was a former rooms manager of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, was fired on Inauguration Day.Eric Johnson, a native of Rehoboth, with a cutout likeness of Mr. Biden. The town is one of the president’s favorite havens.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesFor the Bidens, the White House has taken some adjustment. Delaware, on the other hand, takes almost none. Their home in Rehoboth was purchased after the president promised his wife that he would buy her a beach house with proceeds from a multimillion-dollar book deal signed after he left the vice presidency. (A plaque above the front door reads “A Promise Kept.”)“I wanted it to be the kind of place where you can come in in your wet bathing suit and bare feet and I can just take the broom and brush out the sand,” Dr. Biden told Vogue in 2020. “And that’s what this is. Everything’s easy.”On Thursday, a bike ride the couple took at the state park near their home stretched much longer than expected because the president kept stopping to talk to people, according to a person familiar with their activities. The first couple kept a low profile, though the townspeople were comparing notes about where the first couple might turn up.At DiFebo’s, an Italian restaurant that is a favorite of Mr. Biden’s, patrons hoped the president would drop in for his favorite dish, chicken Parmesan with red sauce. (The first lady usually orders the salmon.) At the Ice Cream Store, a parlor near the boardwalk, tubs of Biden’s Summer White House Cherry sat waiting for consumption.Not this visit. On a wooded lane in the neighborhood where Mr. Biden lives, law enforcement officials in black S.U.V.s restricted the flow of traffic. A Coast Guard ship in the ocean and the sight of burly Secret Service agents in summer wear were the only giveaways that the president was even in town.When Mr. Biden and Dr. Biden returned to the capital, it was a rare reversal of a typical week for them. Aside from the trip this week to Rehoboth — his first as president — Mr. Biden has spent nine weekends at his home in Wilmington, and five at Camp David, the Maryland presidential retreat, according to a review of his schedule. Mr. Biden has swapped the train for Air Force One, sometimes leaving Washington on short notice for even shorter trips: Last week, he flew back to Wilmington for the afternoon to attend the funeral of a longtime aide.Mr. Biden arrived in Rehoboth Beach via helicopter this week. He bought a home in Rehoboth after he promised Ms. Biden that he would purchase a beach house with proceeds from a multimillion-dollar book deal signed after he left the vice presidency.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesNaturally, the fact that Mr. Biden enjoys coming back to Delaware — even in the middle of a presidential workweek — did not seem to surprise residents here.“I think he knows his way around Washington and he’s pretty familiar with what he needs to do and where he needs to be,” Ms. McGuiness, who has known the Bidens for years — her sister used to babysit for the family — said in an interview. “Making a quick travel to the Wilmington home or Rehoboth home makes sense for someone who puts family as a priority.”Mr. Biden’s trip this week to Rehoboth was his first as president, and he has spent nine weekends at his home in Wilmington, and five at Camp David, according to a review of his schedule. Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe first lady often spends less time in Washington during the week than Mr. Biden does. Before his travel weekends, Dr. Biden sometimes heads separately to one of the family homes in Delaware, or meets up with extended family at Camp David. She has also traveled alone to Rehoboth. Ms. Kehoe, the owner of Browseabout Books, said the Bidens were generally treated as part of the scenery.“We try to treat them as if they were any other customer,” Ms. Kehoe said. “Which is a good thing for us.”Convention suggests that presidents should stay close to Washington and be judicious with taxpayer-funded travel, but that concept was tested to its limit with President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump spent over 417 days at one of his properties, a travel habit that blurred the line between his family business and presidential duties. Mr. Trump enjoyed the perks of being president, including the staff, the ceremonies, the planes and the presidential limo. Many of those perks are long familiar to Mr. Biden — he had a similar apparatus around him for eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president — but he has said the trappings that come with the presidency have made him uncomfortable.“I don’t know about you all, but I was raised in the way that you didn’t look for anybody to wait on you,” Mr. Biden said of life in the White House during a town-hall-style interview with CNN in February. “I find myself extremely self-conscious.”A Secret Service agent and a Delaware State Police officer on the beach. During his 36 years in the Senate, Mr. Biden made it a point to travel back to Wilmington to spend most evenings with his sons.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times More