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Six foreign governments — including China and Saudi Arabia — spent more than $750,000 at former President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel in 2017 and 2018 while “seeking to influence American foreign policy,” according documents released Monday by a House panel.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee, which has been investigating whether the 76-year-old Trump used his office for personal enrichment, found representatives of Malaysia, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also splurged on “lavish” rooms costing up to $10,000 a night following a review of documents from the 45th president’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP.
The first questionable spending happened in August 2017, when a delegation from the Chinese embassy spent nearly $20,000 at the luxury hotel two months before Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In a statement Monday, the committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), suggested the spending may have been on Trump’s mind in November 2017 when “he lavished praise on President Xi Jinping, and in contrast to his campaign, blamed the US for its trade deficit with China.”
“Other documents obtained by the committee indicate that the Trump Hotel may have sought business from both China and Russia around this time, despite the Trump Organization’s promise not to enter into any foreign deals while Mr.
