Construction and opening The
United States Congress approved construction of a new post office for
Washington, D.C., on June 25, 1890. The site, at the southeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street, was chosen by
Senator Leland Stanford in 1888 in the hope that the building would revitalize the
Murder Bay neighborhood between the
Capitol building and the
White House.
Willoughby J. Edbrooke, Supervising Architect of the
Treasury Department, designed the structure in the tradition of the Romanesque Revival architecture of
Henry Hobson Richardson. Construction began in 1892, and the building was complete in 1899. The total cost of construction was $3 million. At the time of its completion, the Post Office Building contained the largest uninterrupted enclosed space in the city. By the time it opened, the building was also too small to accommodate the government agencies which occupied it. The city postmaster had advocated a building with a footprint, but only were purchased. Treasury Department offices were to have taken over the eighth floor, but the structure was so overcrowded that this move was suspended. In the early 1880s,
Senator Justin Smith Morrill and Senator
John James Ingalls proposed razing all the structures between Pennsylvania Avenue and B Street (now
Constitution Avenue) to the south to create a park. The influential
McMillan Plan of 1902, however, proposed retaining the structure. (It could hardly have done otherwise, with the building only just having been completed.) Nonetheless, the same year the
Washington Post editorialized in favor of its demolition. Later that year, Senator
Weldon B. Heyburn introduced legislation to authorize the federal government to purchase all the land between Pennsylvania Avenue (northeast side), the
National Mall (south side), 15th Street N.W. (west side), and the Capitol grounds (to the east) for the construction of an architecturally "harmonious" set of massive office buildings. Heyburn's plan retained the architecturally dominating Post Office Building of 1899 with its commanding tower, but adjusted its Pennsylvania Avenue side to be parallel with the street. The clock in the building tower was originally mechanical in nature, and kept accurate time via gravity. A cable was wrapped around a drum, and a large weight attached to the end of the cable. As the cable unwound due to the force of gravity, the clock hands turned. The cable was rewound once or twice a day.
20th century In 1914, the District of Columbia's General Post Office moved to a larger
Beaux Arts/
Classical Revival building constructed next to recently completed
Union Station of similar impressive style, taking advantage of heavy use of the national railroad system for speedier mail delivery. Although only 15 years old, the building at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue was now commonly called the "old" post office. For the next forty years, the building served as office space for several government agencies. Government officials, other experts, and the press believed that the demolition of the 1898
District Building ("city hall" for the
District of Columbia) and the Old Post Office Building, and the closure of many streets in the area, would follow. A Board of Architectural Consultants was created on May 19, 1927, to advise the federal agencies developing the Federal Triangle on how to proceed. By July 1927, the board had fashioned a general plan for the area, but did not address whether the Old Post Office Building, the District Building, or the Southern Railway Building should be torn down. Planning for the complex was deeply influenced by the
City Beautiful movement and the idea of creating a civic center to achieve efficiency in administration as well as reinforce the public's perception of government as authoritative and permanent. For the architectural style of the buildings, the board adopted the McMillan Plan's recommendation of the
Neoclassical style. Rather than a mass of tall, imposing buildings, two unifying open spaces (intended for ceremonial use, and under discussion by the Board at least by March 1928) would be utilized. The first would be a Circular Plaza (inspired by the
Place Vendôme) bisected by 12th Street NW, and which would require the demolition of the Old Post Office Building. By 1934, however, although the government had cleared land around the Old Post Office Building, Congress was increasingly opposed to demolishing the structure. Tearing down a structurally sound 35-year-old building during the
Great Depression seemed foolish. But the executive branch agencies overseeing the Federal Triangle's construction still wanted it gone. Yet, it was not demolished. Four years passed. Although a push was made in 1938 to remove the Old Post Office Building, Senator
Elmer Thomas defended it and attacked the erection of a Neoclassical office building in its place as financially unacceptable. The effort to remove the building in 1938 was the last one for 30 years. Various reasons have been suggested for why the Old Post Office Building survived. A common claim is that the federal government, fighting the Great Depression, simply did not have the money. Press reports at the time, however, noted that voters would have punished congressmen who tore down a perfectly good building. By the 1950s, and
Eisenhower era, the neighborhood around the Old Post Office Building had also declined. Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. was marked by deteriorating homes, shops, and office buildings on the north side and monumental Neoclassical federal office buildings of the 1920s-30s era Federal Triangle on the south. On October 10, 1956, the weight of the clock came loose from the cable and plunged through two floors, narrowly avoiding killing a man, who had just gotten up from his desk. The mechanical clock was later replaced with an electric one. The council's draft plan was ready for Kennedy's approval almost two and a half years later when he was
assassinated in
Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963. The draft plan retained the Old Post Office Building. Kennedy's successor, 36th President
Lyndon B. Johnson, agreed to move forward with the plan and appointed a Temporary President's Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, although it did not hold its first meeting until May 21, 1965. The new commission recommended that the Old Post Office be torn down in favor of completing the plan for the Federal Triangle. The temporary commission managed to prevent development of the avenue which was contrary to the draft plan, but it never was able to win congressional approval for its plan. It ceased to function on November 15, 1969, due to lack of funds. A permanent Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) was finally created by Congress on October 30, 1972. An attempt to demolish the Old Post Office Building began in February 1970. The
National Capital Planning Commission, a federal agency with legal jurisdiction over major building projects in the Washington metropolitan area, agreed (although it said the tower might be preserved). Within days, Wolf Von Eckardt, the influential architectural critic of
The Washington Post, began campaigning for the structure's preservation. No action was taken on the demolition project in 1970, and Von Eckardt continued to press for the building's preservation in 1971. By early 1971, a group of local citizens and architects formed a group known as "Don't Tear It Down" (predecessor to the D.C. Preservation League). The group's members included
Nancy Hanks, the politically influential chairwoman of the
National Endowment for the Arts. Don't Tear It Down began heavily lobbying the PADC, the GSA (which owned the building for the federal government), White House, Congress, and D.C. city government to stop the demolition. Opposition to the demolition began to grow in the U.S. Senate, which held hearings on the buildings in April 1971. Preservation forces received a major boost in May 1971 when the federal
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recommended retaining it. The
Nixon administration, however, continued to seek its demolition so that Federal Triangle could be completed in time for the
United States Bicentennial in 1976. But by this time, Senator
Mike Gravel, chair of the Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds of the
Committee on Public Works was strongly opposed to the effort. Gravel sought allies in the
United States House of Representatives, and in June 1972, the
House Committee on Appropriations voted down Nixon's request for money to demolish the Old Post Office.
Preservation and renovation The Old Post Office was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1973. That same year, the GSA formally dropped its intention to demolish the building and instead developed a plan to preserve it. The National Capital Planning Commission agreed to the project. Major renovation of the structure was made possible in 1976 by enactment of the Public Buildings Cooperative Use Act. The law gave GSA the legal authority to lease federal buildings and use the money received for renovations and upgrades. It also legalized the use of a portion of federal office buildings for commercial retail and restaurant use. The building badly needed it: The atrium roof had been covered over, making the interior dark; the building leaked and had suffered extensive water damage; there was mold throughout the building; the tower was filled with five to six meters of pigeon droppings, and the heating system often broke down. in front of the building The GSA held a competition in 1978 to find a partner willing to redevelop the Old Post Office Building. The agency believed that the configuration of the interior space and downtown real estate market would support only a hotel. But the winning bid did not propose a hotel. A joint venture by four firms—
McGaughy, Marshall & McMillan;
Arthur Cotton Moore Associates; Associated Space Design, Inc.; and Stewart Daniel Hoban & Associates—won the competition. Artwork added included
Robert Irwin installation
48 Shadow Planes. The renovated building was officially dedicated on April 19, 1983. Vice President
George H. W. Bush presided over the event. The re-opening was celebrated with peals from the Bells of Congress from the clock tower. Federal tenants included the
Institute for Museum Services,
National Endowment for the Arts, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. (Modular office furniture was used to allow more people to work in the offices, which proved controversial among federal employees used to traditional desks and chairs.) The retail section included a performance space known as the Nancy Hanks Center. The clock tower and observation deck reopened to the public on May 1, 1984. The 1983 renovation won strong praise from architectural critic Benjamin Forgey. The commercial space was designed by the
Boston firm of Benjamin Thompson & Associates, and it was leased by Evans Development Co. of
Baltimore. More than 50 restaurants and boutique retail stores were anticipated to sublet portions of the three-story retail section, and it was 98% leased at its opening. During the mid-1980s, Hillman Properties bought out its partner, Evans Development, and took control of the Old Post Office Pavilion. During 1983, the
District of Columbia government and the
United States Postal Service created a by wooden replica of the Postal Service's new 1984 twenty-
cent "Love" stamp (see
Post-World War II United States postage stamps and postal history). Starting in 1984, replicas of the latest versions of the "Love" stamp were lowered from the
spire of the Old Post Office Building's Clock Tower around midnight during each
New Year's Eve. Musicians entertained ballroom dancers within the building while
fireworks and
searchlight beams illuminated the night-time sky and celebrities performed on outdoor stages. At midnight, bells pealed from the tower and neon signs flashed "Happy New Year" amid
laser light shows. As 1985 waned, D.C. Mayor
Marion Barry predicted: "We're going to outdo
New York. We think we might just take over and become the best single event." By the beginning of 1990, the
neon-lighted stamp had reached a size of by and a weight of two tons (1814 kg). However, after the celebration marking the beginning of 1986 had ended, clean-up crews found a
strangled and
raped 18-year-old woman dead in a stairwell 100 yards away from an indoor stage at which
Cab Calloway had earlier performed. Although the event that marked the beginning of 1988 was orderly and well-attended, Although most retailers were making money, revenues fluctuated wildly on a seasonal basis. Restaurants had a difficult time earning money, and turnover among them was high. Old Post Office Joint Venture, a group led by Hillman Properties, the developer of the pavilion, was also losing money. Old Post Office Joint Venture (OPOJV) received $166,000 a year in rent from GSA, but its agreement with the federal government called for doubling the size of the retail space to . Approval for that expansion had never been given. OPOJV originally proposed expansion of the retail space into the
Internal Revenue Service Building, but this was rejected for security reasons. It then proposed an underground parking lot and pavilion expansion in the area occupied by the IRS building's parking lot, but this, too, was not approved. The East Atrium was not well received, critically. Architecture critic Benjamin Forgey acknowledged that the building achieved its goals; incorporated many modern architectural design features (such as glass
curtain walls,
setbacks, and good connections to sidewalks and pedestrian areas); and it added a piece of the 1982 master plan for Federal Triangle. But Forgey called the design by the local architectural firm of Karn Charuhas Chapman & Twohey awkward, with "clunky" proportions and over-heavy elements. The interior, however, won praise for its lightness. A small fire broke out on the west side of the Old Post Office Building between the ninth floor ceiling and the roof on August 26, 1992. Workers repairing the roof accidentally caused the blaze, which began at 3:45 pm and was extinguished 45 minutes later. Although small, the fire snarled downtown traffic during the evening
rush hour. By October 1993, despite more than 3 million visitors a year, OPOJV was behind on its rent to GSA and in default on its mortgage to Collin Equities (a subsidiary of
Wells Fargo). Real estate experts blamed the cost of heating and cooling the vast atrium, heavy tenant turnover, and the lack of a theater for a space below the East Atrium. Although the D.C. Convention and Visitors Association said the Old Post Office was the eighth most-visited attraction in the District of Columbia, retail experts believed it had never made money, and the East Atrium did not bring in enough rent to support the Old Post Office Pavilion. Collin Equities/Wells Fargo foreclosed on OPOJV in October 1993. The bank hired Hill Partners, a real estate management firm from
Charlotte, North Carolina, to revitalize the retail aspects of the development. Hill Partners said that improving access to and shoppers' awareness of the retail area, it could double the number of visitors to the Old Post Office to more than 7 million. Hill Partners began reevaluating its tenant mix with a view to adding retailers which D.C. residents needed. It also revealed that the East Atrium was a money-loser, never filling more than half its space. Whether the East Atrium would remain open was not clear. The company agreed, however, to keep the Pavilion area a "
festival marketplace" (one which offers a combination of entertainment, food, and retail shops). In March 1995, the
Cineplex Odeon Corporation said it would open a seven-screen movie theater in East Atrium (which now had no tenants). Hill Partners had a difficult time finding any new tenants for the East Atrium and for the Pavilion. But nothing came of these discussions. In 1997, a hotel development firm, Denhill D.C. LLC, approached GSA and offered to take over Collins Equities/Wells Fargo lease. The company said it would spend more than $100 million to turn the office space on the upper floors into hotel rooms and open the Pennsylvania Avenue walls to create more access and street-front retail space. In return, the company asked the GSA to extend the 55-year lease to 65 years, and give it the option of adding three more decade-long lease extension options. According to Denhill D.C. officials, the negotiations were so far advanced that they had a management company ready to operate the hotel and retail tenants ready to take space. GSA said it then ended the negotiations over legal concerns that it was about to enter into a long-term lease without advertising it to other bidders. On June 15, 2001, Senators
Robert Smith,
Harry Reid,
Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and
Byron Dorgan sent a letter to GSA giving consent for GSA to expend such funds as necessary to acquire by purchase the leasehold rights of the lease at the Old Post Office, if certain conditions were followed. Abramoff took Safavian on an all-expenses-paid golf trip to Scotland, during which time they discussed turning the lease over to the unidentified tribe. Savafian was later convicted of
perjury for lying about his relationship with Abramoff. The GSA issued a Request for Expression of Interest in 2004 for developing the Old Post Office Building. Several companies expressed interest, but GSA did not proceed further. Beginning in 2002, a major push was made to convert the building into the
National Women's History Museum and a bill to do so passed in the
United States Senate in 2005. However, local developers, city residents, and members of the House of Representatives were angry that the building would be given away for free. The bill was reintroduced in the
109th United States Congress, although this time the women's museum asked for only the East Atrium. This effort, too, was unsuccessful, even though the East Atrium had broken floor tiles and unfinished interior construction that exposed beams and left gaping holes instead of storefronts. In March 2005, GSA issued a
request for information (RFI) and received more than 20 responses. However, the agency did not receive approval from the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to proceed to a
request for proposals (RFP). OMB did not believe that the responses to the RFI showed that redevelopment was in the best financial interest of the federal government, however. In June 2006, as a result of the
Mid-Atlantic United States flood of 2006, record-setting rainfall of fell on Washington. The basement of the Old Post Office Building flooded, as did the
William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building (headquarters of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), the
Herbert C. Hoover Building (headquarters of the
United States Department of Commerce), the
Internal Revenue Service Building, the
National Archives Building, and the
Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building. The Old Post Office Building, one of those on higher ground, reopened after two days. Most of the other buildings remained closed for a week. In 2007, GSA estimated, that it would cost more than $100 million to modernize the structure. GSA also said that while it earned $5.4 million in rent at the Old Post Office Building in 2007, it spent $11.9 million on administrative and maintenance, for a loss of $6.5 million. In 2008,
Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.'s
Delegate to Congress, introduced the "Old Post Office Building Redevelopment Act of 2008" (H.R. 5001) to require GSA move faster on issuing a request for proposals. The report specifically accused GSA of not moving to redevelop the property during a real estate boom in 2006. When the boom ended, GSA was stuck with the property, and the House committee accused the agency of losing more than $25 million on maintenance rather than generating income. With pressure building on the White House to deal with billions of dollars' worth of excess or underutilized federal property, the
Barack Obama administration said it would take action to more quickly dispose of property like the Old Post Office. Douglas Firstenberg, a principal with
StonebridgeCarras, a real estate property management firm that helped the federal government lease buildings, said that historic preservation restrictions and the large number of existing tenants made redevelopment difficult.
Trump International Hotel In March 2011, a new RFP was issued by GSA. In all, GSA received 10 bids, most of which were hotels. Among the proposals were a luxury hotel and a National Museum of the Jewish People. Other bidders included
The Trump Organization, Carpenter, Monument Realty,
JBG Smith, and a partnership of
Hilton Worldwide and
Metropolitan Partnership, Ltd. On February 6, 2012, GSA announced that it had chosen The Trump Organization as the potential redeveloper of the Old Post Office Building. The company partnered with Colony Capital, a private equity firm, in its bid. The Trump Organization bid pledged to spend $200 million to turn the structure into a 250-room luxury hotel. Much of the investment would be in cash, not debt. The Trumps stated that the hotel would include a conference center, Preservationists stated that Trump would not respect the historic nature of the building The Trump Organization bid touted the involvement of
Arthur Cotton Moore, a noted local architect who had earlier renovated historic buildings within the area and had helped design the Old Post Office Building renovations during the 1970s. Another preservationist architect, John Cullinane, who had been working on the project resigned "because I couldn't support what they were doing to the building... [t]hey were covering up or tearing out everything that was historic...". Some city residents worried that Trump would block access to the clock tower. However, the National Park Service stated that it would retain control over the clock tower and observation deck and would keep them open for tours.
Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein questioned the financial wisdom of selecting Trump/Colony Capital, given Trump's extensive problems with
bankruptcy and Colony Capital's current problems keeping its hotel properties out of receivership. Monument and development partner
Angelo, Gordon & Co. proposed a office building with a media center on the first three floors. It also proposed demolishing the annex in favor of a parking garage. Monument Realty bid for the building with a lease price of $5.1 million annually, with rent increases based on the building's performance. The bidding group, which included Hilton Worldwide, said GSA failed to take into account Trump's repeated bankruptcies and unrealistic economic assumptions. GSA said Metropolitan lost the award because it offered to spend only $140 million to renovate the building. In the summer of 2012, The Trump Organization asked the District of Columbia to waive possessory interest taxes on the Old Post Office Building. The possessory interest tax was estimated at $3 million in 2012, although it would likely be far more once the property was fully redeveloped. D.C. tax officials denied the waiver. Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesperson for
Mayor Vincent C. Gray, said, "It was never part of the bid proposal that the project would not be subject to the tax." David Orowitz, the Vice President for Acquisitions and Development in The Trump Organization, said that the denial of tax waiver was not a surprise and would not change the financial calculations of the company's bid. Donald Trump later denied seeking any tax waiver. As the clock ticked on the one-year deadline to finalize a deal with GSA, The Trump Organization hired Streetsense, a real estate and retail design firm, to select restaurants and retailers for the Old Post Office Pavilion. Trump chose the company over local real estate developer
Douglas Jemal and retail design firm Ashkenazy Acquisition.
Tiffany & Co. was among the retailers the company talked to. By late January 2013, no final lease agreement had been reached. However, both The Trump Organization and GSA said that they were closing in on a deal, and GSA said it was unlikely to reopen the bidding process if one was not reached by the 12-month deadline. Trump officials and GSA attributed the delay to the length of the lease, which created complexities that needed time to be resolved. GSA also said there were also unique issues raised by the building's historic status. The Trump Organization cleared several regulatory hurdles in April and May 2013. On April 28, the Commission of Fine Arts gave non-binding, preliminary approval to the company's draft redevelopment plan. On May 16, GSA completed an
environmental impact assessment (EIA) which concluded the redevelopment would have no significant adverse historic, land use, or transportation impacts. The EIA also concluded that the hotel would generate about $6.5 million per year in hotel bed tax revenue and $1.5 million in sales tax revenue. On June 4, GSA reached a final agreement with The Trump Organization regarding redevelopment of the Old Post Office building. The Trump Organization negotiated a 60-year lease under which it paid $250,000 in rent per month, with annual increases tied to the
Consumer Price Index. To allay concerns by critics that he too often defaulted on developments, Trump agreed to provide a $40 million personal
guaranty as well as a "bad acts" (to cover failure to pay taxes, fraud, or other forms of misconduct). some said 270, some said 271, and others 275). Many of the rooms would have high ceilings, The average room was expected to be in size, In what were formerly the offices of the
Postmaster General of the United States, the company planned two "presidential suites" of each with ceilings. Each presidential suite would have a working fireplace, sauna, steam room,
walk-in closet, direct-access elevators, and views of Pennsylvania Avenue NW and the
National Mall. Under the 2008 redevelopment law, Congress had 30 days to disapprove the lease or it would become final. On August 5, 2013, Congress allowed the lease between GSA and The Trump Organization to go into force. The
Washington Business Journal reported that the lease called for a 263-room The D.C. Preservation League (the former Don't Tear It Down) said it supported the Trump redevelopment of the site. The $200 million renovation began on May 1, 2014, with the closure of the clock tower. Changes to the structure's exterior included the removal of the words "OLD POST OFFICE" from the central
arch of the building's main entrance and the placement beneath that arch of a bar containing the words "TRUMP INTERNATIONAL HOTEL". The Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. opened to paying guests with a "soft opening" on September 12, 2016. A December 2016 review in
Vanity Fair described the hotel as grand on the outside, a complete disaster and "a frightful dump" on the inside. In December 2016, Luxury Travel Intelligence reviewed the Trump Hotel and found major shortcomings in its service and operations. It called the decor "garish", said that it was not suited to the discerning business traveler, and ranked it as the third worst hotel in the world. On February 20, 2018, the hotel was named to the
Forbes Travel Guide Five Star list for 2018 and later that year, it was named to Forbes' inaugural World's Most Luxurious Hotels list. A
Condé Nast Traveler article in May 2018 praised the restaurants and the service at the hotel. On February 20, 2019, Forbes Travel Guide renewed the Five Star rating for 2019. The hotel has also achieved the number 1 rating on
TripAdvisor.com for all Washington hotels. and
Northern Virginia in the distance from the clock tower observatory The Trump Organization initially entered into contracts with chefs
José Andrés and
Geoffrey Zakarian to open restaurants in the atrium and in the northwest corner of the Organization's planned new hotel. However, both chefs pulled out of the deals after Donald Trump made controversial public comments about Mexicans in June 2015, before the hotel had opened. The ensuing legal disputes were settled in April 2017. For 16 years until 2015, the Sakura Matsuri-Japanese Street Festival, the largest
Japanese Cultural Festival in the United States, took place throughout a spring-time day on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Old Post Office Building. The Festival's location enabled the event to be near the route of the annual Cherry Blossom Parade, which traveled nearby along
Constitution Avenue during the same day (see
National Cherry Blossom Festival). However, in 2016 and 2017, the Street Festival's organizers were forced to move their event to a distant location in Washington. The Festival's relocation became necessary after the Trump Organization negotiated a deal with the
Government of the District of Columbia that requires a lane on Pennsylvania Avenue to remain open to the Trump International Hotel's customers and
valet parking service except during major events such as
presidential inaugural parades, thus leaving insufficient space on the Avenue for the festival's activities and for those of other events formerly held near the building. Ivanka Trump helped resolve disputes between the Inauguration Committee and the hotel's staff. World leaders stated Trump was encouraging visiting emissaries to stay at Trump hotels. Trump family members, such as Ivanka, profited from their stake in the hotel while Donald Trump was president. After he left office, the
House Oversight Committee continued to investigate, publicly revealing in October 2021 that the Trump International Hotel had received about $3.7 million from foreign governments, potentially violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Additionally, according to the congressional committee, the hotel had a net loss of over $70 million during Trump's presidency. To address this loss, another of Trump's companies, DJT Holdings LLC, loaned over $27 million to the hotel, only a small portion of which the hotel repaid. Most of the loan was eventually converted to capital contributions.
Emoluments Clause lawsuits CREW v. Trump In January 2017, a lawsuit against Trump was brought by
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and several prominent legal scholars—including
Laurence Tribe of
Harvard Law School, former White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform
Norman L. Eisen,
Erwin Chemerinsky of the
UC Irvine, and
Zephyr Teachout of
Fordham University. The lawsuit argues that Trump is in violation of the
Foreign Emoluments Clause of the United States because his hotels, as well as other businesses, are accepting payments from foreign guests.
District of Columbia and Maryland v. Trump On June 12, 2017, the Attorney General
Karl Racine of the
District of Columbia and Attorney General
Brian Frosh of
Maryland filed a joint lawsuit in the
United States District Court for the District of Maryland against President Trump alleging both
foreign and
domestic emoluments clause violations of the
United States Constitution. Similar to CREW v. Trump, Attorneys General Racine and Frosh cite
The Trump Organization receipt of foreign money at Trump Hotels and other businesses as a violation of the constitution, and that this transaction negatively affects the economy of D.C. and Maryland, as well as the best interests of the American public. In January 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed the lower courts to dismiss the case as
moot, because Trump was no longer president. The lawsuit makes specific allegations concerning attempts to solicit foreign governments at the Old Post Office building. In 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that individual members of Congress lacked standing to bring action against the President where they sought declaratory and injunctive relief for alleged violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
Trump response President Donald Trump responded to the emolument clause allegations by outlining a plan where payments from foreign guests would be paid into the U.S. Treasury and to the GSA contract issues by placing his holdings into a trust directed by his children. This plan was criticized by
Walter M. Shaub, the Director of the
U.S. Office of Government Ethics, who stated that "the plan does not comport with the tradition of our Presidents over the past 40 years" and was at odds with past practice, since "...every President in modern times has taken the strong medicine of divestiture."
GSA contract The Trump Organization's lease contract with the GSA, signed in 2013, provides that "no elected official of the government ... shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom." In February 2017, Senators
Tom Carper and
Claire McCaskill (the Democratic
ranking members of the
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and its
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, respectively) wrote a letter to the GSA
inspector general, writing: "Since President Trump took the oath of office, the Trump Old Post Office, LLC appears to be in breach of the plain language of the lease agreement." They requested an inspector general inquiry. On August 30, 2017, Bloomberg BNA reported that both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the GSA Inspector General's Office of Inspections had confirmed that they were evaluating GSA's management and administration of the lease. In January 2019, GSA General Counsel Jack St. John agreed with the single recommendation from Carol F. Ochoa's 47-page report in which the President's business interest in the Trump International Hotel at the Old Post Office building might constitute a violation of the emoluments clause and this might cause a breach of the lease.
Political protests During the
presidency of Donald Trump, the Old Post Office became a frequent location of political protests. During the evening of May 15, 2017, artist Robin Bell projected messages onto the hotel's
facade that stated, among other things, "Emoluments Welcome," along with an animation of the flags of nations in which Trump had business projects. On January 13, 2018, after Trump reportedly used the word "shithole" at a meeting, Bell projected onto the facade the message "Not a D.C. resident?" / "Need a place to stay?" / "Try our shithole". Following the
March for Our Lives anti-gun violence rally on March 24, 2018, many rally-goers left their signs by the hotel.
Waldorf Astoria Washington DC In 2021, the Trump Organization agreed to sell the lease on the building for $375 million to the investment firm CGI Merchant Group, which planned to rebrand the hotel as a
Waldorf Astoria. The Trump Organization would profit $100 million from the deal. The New York Times reported in July 2025 that the buyer had borrowed $28 million from Trump to cover closing costs, then defaulted on the loan. Trump had invested $100 million in the building and made $79 million from the sale after taxes. In February 2022, the House Oversight Committee sought to prevent Trump from making the sale. The committee wrote to the GSA, arguing that Trump was suspected of having made "false or misleading information to the federal government" by giving GSA "at least one financial statement with possible material misrepresentations". The committee said Trump should not be "rewarded" for "seeking to profit off the presidency." GSA could have potentially prevented the sale of the lease by terminating the lease before the Trump Organization completed the sale. The hotel reopened under its new name on June 1, 2022. ==Clock tower and bells==