The president’s real estate company is looking to sell the luxury hotel it operates four blocks from the White House.
The Trump Organization retained JLL to market the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, Eric Trump, a company executive and the president’s son, told The Wall Street Journal.
The 263-room hotel, a renovation of the historic Old Post Office Building, opened in September 2016, two months before Donald Trump was elected president. The Trump Organization leases the building from the General Services Administration, the federal government’s real estate arm, under a long-term deal.
The company is seeking over $500M for the hotel, the WSJ reported, penciling out to about $2M per room. That would make it one of the priciest-ever hotel sales, and the sale would only include ownership of the hotel business, not the government-owned property.
The hotel has remained under scrutiny since Trump refused to divest himself from the business upon taking office. The company has faced lawsuits and investigations from Congress, state attorneys general and ethics watchdogs over foreign payments to the hotel that could violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Eric Trump told the Wall Street Journal these issues are a factor in the company’s decision to seek buyers for the hotel.
“People are objecting to us making so much money on the hotel, and therefore we may be willing to sell,” he told the WSJ.
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