Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine is seeking to interview Donald Trump Jr. about misused inauguration funds used to overpay the Trump International Hotel in 2017, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
According to Racine’s office, the bill from the Loews Madison Hotel, to the sum of $49,000, came to a collections agency from Trump Jr.’s assistant and friend, but the charge was paid by the non-profit Trump Inaugural Committee, although it should have gone to the Trump Organization.
Trump Jr. would be the second member of the family to be interviewed about the lawsuit.
In December 2020, Ivanka Trump, the president's eldest daughter and senior adviser, testified under oath as a witness in the case. Shortly after her deposition, she tweeted a screenshot of an e-mail correspondence with the hotel that allegedly shows she attempted to charge “a fair market rate”. She wrote in the post that “this ‘inquiry’ is another politically motivated demonstration of vindictiveness & waste of taxpayer dollars."
The lawsuit, filed in January 2020, alleges that Trump's inaugural committee took a million dollars of donor money to pay for a barely used ballroom for Trump's DC hotel and the $49,000 bill.
According to Racine, the committee "was charged at extraordinarily high levels" and, on one day, "paid $175,000 for full use of the hotel's event space, including use of a large ballroom for half of a day." A second non-profit booked the ballroom for the other half of the day and was reported to have only paid $5,000 for use of the room.