FILTERING MILLIONS INTO TRUMP’S HOTELS IS JUST: “BUSINESS AS USUAL”

…Jason Johns, a US Vet and Wisconsin lobbyist

Lobbyist duped American vets into lobbying for the Saudi’s, while giving millions to Trump Hotels

The records show that Saudi Arabia was able to filter over a million dollars into Trump’s personal businesses in the 3-6 months of Trump’s first year in office.  In just the old D.C. Post Office that became a luxury Trump hotel, the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at this Trump hotel within a month of Trump’s election in 2016.  They paid for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel in just three months.  This is according to organizers of the trips and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the time, Saudi lobbyists were reserving large numbers of D.C. area hotel rooms as part of a some-what strange campaign that offered US military veterans a free trip to Washington.  The vets were then sent to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law that the Saudis opposed.  This is according to both the veterans and the organizers.

At first, lobbyists for the Saudis put the veterans up in Northern Virginia. Then, in December 2016, they switched most of their business to the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington D.C.. In all, the lobbyists spent more than $270,000 to house six groups of visiting veterans at the Trump hotel, which Trump leases the old Post Office bldg. from the US Government.

Those bookings have fueled a pair of federal lawsuits alleging Trump violated the US Constitution by his personal business receiving improper payments from foreign governments.

During this period, records show, the average nightly rate at the hotel was $768. The lobbyist who ran the trips say they chose Trump’s hotel strictly because it offered a discount from that high rate and they had rooms available.  It was said to not curry favor from Trump.  (Yeah right!)

Some of the veterans who stayed at Trump’s hotel say they were kept in the dark about the Saudis’ role in the trips.  Now, they wonder if they were being used twice: Initially to deliver someone else’s message to Congress, but to also deliver paid business to the Trump Organization.  That’s what it looks like.

“It all made sense, when we found out that the Saudis had paid for it,” said Henry Garcia, a Navy veteran from San Antonio who went on three of the vet trips. He said the organizers never said anything about Saudi Arabia when they invited him.

He had believed the trips were organized by other veterans, but that puzzled him, because this group spent money like no veterans group he had ever worked with. There were private hotel rooms, open bars, free dinners.  Then, Garcia said, one of the organizers who had been drinking minibar champagne mentioned the Saudi Crown Prince.  “I said, ‘Oh, we were just used to give Trump money,’ ” Garcia said.

The Washington firm Qorvis/MSLGroup, a lobbyist group that has long represented the Saudi government in the United States.  They paid the organizers of the ‘VETERANS FLY-IN” trips.  This is according to lobbying disclosure forms. Obviously, this firm declined to comment.

D.C. and the state of Maryland are suing President Trump for violating the US Constitutional provision called "the emoluments clause."  This is the clause that says a US President cannot receive money or items of value from a foreign government.

The Saudi Embassy did not respond to any of The Post questions. Trump hotel executives, as expected, speaking on the condition of anonymity, they said they were unaware at the time that Saudi Arabia was footing the bill and declined to comment on the rates they offered to the Saudi’s.

The existence of the Saudi-funded stays at Trump’s hotel was reported by several news outlets last year.  But reviews of emails, and interviews with two dozen veterans provide far more detail about the extent of the trips and the organizers’ interactions with veterans than had previously been reported.

The vet’s reporting showed a total of six trips, during which the groups grew larger after the initial visit and the stays increased over time.

These transactions have become ammunition for plaintiffs in two lawsuits, alleging that Trump violated the US Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause by taking payments from foreign governments. The attorneys general in Maryland and the D.C. district subpoenaed 13 Trump business entities and 18 competing businesses, largely in search of records of foreign spending at the hotel.

Earlier this year, the Trump Organization donated about $151,000 to the US Treasury, saying that was it was their amount of profit from foreign governments.  Of course, there was no explanation how they arrived at that dollar amount. The Justice Department, in trying to defend the president in the lawsuits, says the Constitution doesn’t bar routine business transactions.

When the routine business transactions for a foreign government is in the hundreds of thousands to millions of US dollars into the president’s personal business, that’s against the US Constitution.

Next year, the transactions will also face scrutiny from the House’s new Democratic majority.  Democrats have said they want to understand Trump’s business connections with the Saudi government. “Foreign countries understand that they can curry favor with the president by patronizing his businesses,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who will lead the House Intelligence Committee next year. “It presents a real problem, in that it may actually work.” Of course, as usual, the White House declined to comment.

When these trips began, in late 2016, the Saudi government was on a losing streak in Washington.  In late September, the Republican Congress overrode a veto from President Barack Obama and passed a law the Saudis vehemently opposed.  The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA. The new law, backed by the families of Sept. 11 victims, opened the door to costly litigation alleging that the Saudi government bore some of the blame for 9/11.  Of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks, 15 of them were Saudi citizens.

“Welcome Home Brother!” wrote Jason Johns, an Army veteran and Wisconsin lobbyist, to several veterans in December 2016.  This is according to identical emails two veterans shared with The Post.  Johns invited the veterans, whom he did not know personally, on a trip to “storm the Hill” for lobbying against the law that was against the Saudi’s best interest.

“Lodging at the Trump International Hotel, all expenses paid,” Johns wrote in the emails.  Johns’ email signature said he was with “N.M.L.B. Veterans Advocacy Group,” which is Johns’ law firm in Madison, Wis.  According to filings with the Justice Department, Johns was actually making the overtures on behalf of the Saudi government. The Saudis’ longtime lobbyist, Qorvis, was paying a third party, who in turn was paying Johns.

After that initial trip, Qorvis asked John’s to schedule more trips for 2017.  It didn’t tell him to go back to the Trump hotel. But since the first trip had gone well, he did it again.

In all, there were five more trips in January and February, according to documents and interviews. The number of attendees rose to 50 on one trip in late January, and the trips were extended to three nights, this is according to agendas sent to veterans. That also was the clients’ call.  The Trump hotel staff did not know that the Saudis were paying the bill: “I did all this on my corporate credit card for my client, who was Qorvis, and said I was bringing a group of veterans to work on legislation.”

Veterans who attended these trips said a few things surprised them.  One was how good their group seemed to be at spending money.  “We’ve done hundreds of veterans events, and we’ve stayed in Holiday Inns and eaten Ritz Crackers and drank lemonade.  And we’re staying in this hotel that cost over $500 a night,” said Dan Cord, a Marine veteran. “I’d never seen anything like this. They were like, ‘That’s what’s so cool! Drink on us.’ ”

Each trip included one, and sometimes two, dinners in a Trump hotel banquet room. There was usually an open bar in the room, according to the veterans, and it was always supposed to end at a certain hour.  However, the vets said, the leader would theatrically declare an extension of an hour.

“He’d be like, ‘You know what, just put it on for another hour!” said Scott Bartels, an Army veteran from Wisconsin who went on three of the trips.

Another surprise, veterans said, was how bad the vet group seemed to be at lobbying.

“The fourth time I saw this Grassley’s guy, he was like, ‘Hey, what [else] is going on?’ We didn’t even talk about the bill [against the Saudi’s],” said Robert Suesakul.  Suesakul was an Army veteran from Iowa who said this about his fourth visit to the office of Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA).  It had been clear after the first trip that Grassley had no interested in amending the bill. “It didn’t make sense hitting up these guys for a fourth time.”

Another problem: In some cases, it has been shown that congressional staffers confronted them because they knew the Saudi’s were funding these trips, but the veterans did not.

“We’d walk in there, and they’d go, ‘Are you the veterans that are getting bribed?’ ” Suesakul said.

In a phone interview, Johns said it was disappointing to hear veterans say they were “duped” and he said that he had always made clear, at the opening night’s dinner, that the Saudi government was paying. He said the veterans in attendance were all told that if they didn’t like that, they could go home.  That has been seriously disputed by the vets.

Another organizer, Army veteran Dustin Tinsley, didn’t remember Johns telling them about the Saudi involvement. However, he did say he felt veterans should have done their own research or asked who was doing the funding.  “When I was asked directly by other vets, if Saudi Arabia was paying for this, I would say yes.  However, not a single vet said, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this,’ ” Tinsley said.

In a filing with the Justice Department, which is a requirement of US firms working as agents for foreign powers, Qorvis said it had spent $190,000 on lodging at the Trump hotel, and another $82,000 on catering and parking.  All paid for by the Saudi’s.

That figure for lodging worked out to about $360 per person per night, which is far below the Trump hotel’s average rate for the same period.  In financial records, records accidently released last year by the General Services Administration (GSA), which owns the Post Office Hotel building, the Trump Organization said it received an average nightly rate for January and February of $768.67.  This is a price inflated by the high demand around the time of the inauguration.

Since February 2017, Saudi customers have boosted the bottom line at two other Trump hotels.  In Chicago, the Trump hotel’s internal statistics show a sharp uptick in customers from Saudi Arabia after Trump took office.  In New York this year, the general manager of Trump’s hotel at New York's Central Park, they said a single stay by some Saudi customers, who were traveling with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was so lucrative it helped the hotel turn a profit for the quarter.

And we are supposed to believe that filtering a few million extra dollars to the president’s personal business, should just be business as usual and, "No problem here!"

RRRRRIGHT!

Copyright G. Ater 2018