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Trump’s Washington DC hotel no longer exists after a Miami investment group bought the lease.
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Workers were seen on Wednesday dismantling the sign outside the hotel bearing Trump’s name.
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CGI Merchant Group bought the lease and plans to rename it Waldorf Astoria.
A Miami investment group bought the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, and wasted no time in removing the former president’s name from the property.
Videos from outside the hotel on Wednesday night showed workers at a crane tearing down the gold letters of “Trump International Hotel” outside the building just hours after the deal was signed.
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, according to The Wall Street Journal.
CGI Merchant Group — which counts former New York Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez among its investors — is expected to rebrand itself as a Waldorf Astoria, according to 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 “wanting to earn favor” could walk in and “flash cash.” The hotel has hosted officials from dozens of countries but has reportedly lost at least $73 million during Trump’s presidency, according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee.
In the days before the sale became final, the Trump Organization settled a lawsuit filed by the DC Attorney General over claims that the hotel illegally profited from Trump’s 2017 inauguration celebrations by renting space to the inaugural commission against above. the market rates. As part of the settlement, the Trump Organization admitted there was no wrongdoing.
Read the original article on Business Insider
