House Oversight Committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Subcommittee on Government Operations chairman Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) have written to the General Services Administration (GSA) to urge the federal agency to consider terminating the Trump Organization’s lease for the Old Post Office building in D.C., where the ex-president’s company has operated a hotel. Maloney and Connolly wrote along these lines after Mazars, the Trump Organization’s longtime accounting firm, revealed that it was cutting ties with the former president’s company and asserted that it could no longer stand behind the trustworthiness of prior statements of financial condition for the Trump business with which it had been involved.
#BREAKING: Today, a court ruled in our favor that Donald Trump must appear before my office as part of our investigation into his financial dealings.
No one will be permitted to stand in the way of the pursuit of justice, no matter how powerful they are.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 17, 2022
Oversight Committee investigators concluded that Trump also appears to have substantially misrepresented his financial condition to the General Services Administration, including by hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in debts. Maloney and Connolly wrote, in part, as follows:
‘As part of his bid to win the Old Post Office Building lease, former President Trump submitted three years’ worth of Statements of Financial Condition, all compiled by Mazars, to GSA. As the Committee previously explained, those statements appear to be ‘incomplete, misleading, and in violation of the express terms of the solicitation’ given significant omissions in former President Trump’s listed assets and liabilities. Although the financial statements that former President Trump submitted to GSA preceded the ten years of statements that Mazars has now retracted, the earlier statements submitted to GSA contain potential misrepresentations about former President Trump’s assets that are similar to those identified by state investigators.’
New York AG Letitia James on the Trumps being ordered to comply with James' subpoenas:
"No one will be permitted to stand in the way of the pursuit of justice, no matter how powerful they are. No one is above the law."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 18, 2022
The Democratic leaders added in their letter to the agency tied to the lease that in “light of these new revelations, including further evidence that the former President submitted at least one financial statement with possible material misrepresentations to GSA, we request that you consider terminating the Old Post Office Building lease to former President Trump and the Trump Organization,” which they said would “end, once-and-for-all, the grave damage this inappropriate lease has done to presidential ethics and integrity in government contracting.” For the GSA to go through with Maloney and Connolly’s suggestion could deal a serious financial hit to the Trump company, since a sale of the Trump Organization’s lease for this building is on the horizon that could bring in a net profit of $100 million for the business.
"When people show you who they are, believe them the first time." Has Donald Trump not given us front row seats to who he really is? Let's do as the great Maya Angelou said and believe him.
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) February 18, 2022
Connolly himself previously asserted that if Trump “walks away from this laughing all the way to the bank with a $100 million profit, we will have debased the whole concept of enforcing conflict of interests laws and ethics.” Mazars basically disowned the disputed financial statements amid a civil investigation into the former president’s company by New York state Attorney General Letitia James (D), who has been looking into how the Trump Organization may have misrepresented its assets to obtain certain financial benefits. Mazars executive William J. Kelly wrote to a lawyer for the Trump company that the accountants arrived at that conclusion regarding the financial statements “based, in part, upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources.” James already subpoenaed Trump-related records from the General Services Administration.
He spent his entire time at the Interior Department stuck in one investigation after the other. Now, a report by the department's IG states former secretary Ryan Zinke broke federal ethics rules repeatedly by participating in real estate negotiations. https://t.co/exiRfjyNXs
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) February 18, 2022
