Mark Tenally/Associated Press
- Trump’s Washington DC hotel is no more after a Miami investor group purchased its lease.
- Workers were seen on Wednesday dismantling the sign outside the hotel, which bears Trump’s name.
- CGI Merchant Group purchased the lease and intends to rebrand it as a Waldorf Astoria.
A Miami investment group purchased the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, and wasted no time scrubbing the former president’s name from the property.
Videos from outside the hotel on Wednesday night showed workers in a crane tearing down the gold letters spelling “Trump International Hotel” outside the building, just hours after the deal was inked.
—Oren Oppenheim (@OrenOppenheim) May 12, 2022
According to The New York Times, the $375 million sale to CGI Merchant Group was for the Trump family’s lease to operate the hotel. The building itself is owned by the federal government, per The Wall Street Journal.
—Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) May 12, 2022
CGI Merchant Group — which counts former New York Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez among its investors — is expected to re-brand itself as a Waldorf Astoria, per The Times.
The Trump hotel itself was named in December 2021 by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics as the “epicenter” of corruption in DC, where people who wanted to “curry favor” could stroll in and “flash cash.” The hotel has hosted officials from dozens of countries but reportedly lost at least $73 million during Trump’s presidency, per documents released by the House Oversight Committee.
In the days before the sale became final, the Trump Organization settled a lawsuit filed by DC’s attorney general over claims that the hotel had illegally profited off of Trump’s 2017 inaugural celebrations by renting out space to the inaugural committee at above-market rates. As a part of the settlement, the Trump Organization admitted no wrongdoing.
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