President Trump Hit With Complaint From Watchdog Group Over D.C. Hotel Lease

The same day Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, he was greeted with a complaint filed by a watchdog group regarding a potential conflict of interest surrounding the lease of the Trump hotel in the nation's capital.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, has filed a complaint with the General Services Administration alleging that the president is in violation of his lease on the Old Post Office, the land on which the Trump D.C. Hotel is located.

According to CREW, "the lease bars elected government officials from receiving 'any share or part of [the Lease], or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.'" In its complaint, CREW requests that GSA immediately initiates the process of establishing that Trump Post Office LLC is in breach of its ground lease for the Old Post Office Building. Trump owns three fourths of Trump Post Office LLC, which functions under a lease from the GSA.

"Unless GSA has received new information demonstrating President Trump no longer owns Trump Old Post Office LLC, and there is no evidence it has, it is now time for GSA to initiate the process for establishing that President Trump's company has breached the lease and is in default," the complaint states.

At his first press conference as president-elect, Trump and one of his attorneys, Sheri Dillon, said that the president-elect will not divest from his sprawling business interests, instead handing over control of his company to his two adult sons. Dillon added that all of the company's profits from foreign government payments to his hotels will be donated to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

On the day of the press conference, GSA released a statement saying it was seeking additional information that explains and describes any new organizational structure as it applies to the Old Post Office lease.

In addition to the complaint, CREW has also filed a lawsuit against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for failing to turn over information about possible questionnaires from Trump’s transition team seeking names of those working on climate change, which the group requested under the freedom of information act.

Since Trump was elected president, questions have been raised around the possible conflicts of interest he would face while in office. In November, Trump tweeted that he would hold a major press conference on Dec. 15 to announce that he would be leaving his business "in total" even though he was not mandated to do so. That press conference was later delayed.

Those tweets from Trump prompted a rather unorthodox series of tweets from the Office of Government Ethics, expressing their joy at Trump's decision of "total divestiture." Below are just three of the nine tweets sent out by the office Nov. 30. The office stated that divesture is the way to resolve any conflicts.

After Trump's January press conference, Walter Shaub, the director of the OGE, said that he did not think that divestiture was too high of a price to pay to be the president of the United States. Shaub made the remarks at the Brookings Institute.

The Washington Post reported Friday that two liberal advocacy groups, Free Speech for People and RootsAction, have already set up a website called ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org aiming to lay the groundwork for Trump's impeachment. The people behind the website say their effort is not premature.

“If we were wait for all the ill effects that could come from this, too much damage to our democracy would occur,” Ron Fein, legal director at Free Speech for People, told the Post. “It will undermine faith in basic institutions. If nothing else, it’s important for Americans to trust that the president is doing what he thinks is the right thing … not that it would help jump-start a stalled casino project in another country.”

Another challenge to the Trump administration comes from The American Civil Liberties Union, which on day one of the new administration has filed a FOIA request seeking information about Trump's conflicts of interests.

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