**DISCLAIMER: This article was first published in January of 2023**
Frankly, things are already bad enough for the one-term, twice-impeached, disgraced former President Trump and his corruption-riddled family as it is. But, according to a report from The Daily Beast, things are just getting worse when it comes to their seemingly unending legal woes — thanks in large part to the Trump Organization’s, and by default Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump’s, nasty little habit of not paying their bills.
Washington D.C, District Attorney Karl Racine is currently investigating the former president’s business, the Trump Organization, and its inside people such as the former president’s children, over their alleged misuse of inauguration funds dating all the way back to 2017. Now the Beast’s Jose Pagliery reports that Racine is wrapping a $49,358 unpaid bill into his investigation.
The dispute hails from a block of rooms the Trump Organization booked at the Loews Madison Hotel that they ultimately refused to pay for after 13 people didn’t show up — their refusal ultimately led to the massive bill being sent to a collection agency.
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Pagliery reports that the financial dispute put the ex-president and his family back in the “crosshairs in an ongoing investigation into how the Trump kids used the Presidential Inauguration Committee to throw lavish parties of their own.”
Lending legitimacy to the charges behind the scenes is none other than former adviser to ex-First Lady Melania Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was deeply involved in the coordination and planning of Donald’s inauguration festivities and is now working closely with investigators following the Trump family’s attempts to essentially pin the whole mess on her shoulders.
Winston Wolkoff said, “It was their friends. It should never have been sent to the PIC. That’s misuse of funding. The Trump Organization being involved in any way and getting the PIC to pay any sort of balance anywhere on their behalf? It just doesn’t seem legitimate.”
The heart bill was eventually “paid by the Presidential Inaugural Committee at the direction of Rick Gates.” However, the investigation has uncovered a series of messages that show aides for Donald Trump Jr. were in on the power struggle over money.
“In the typical fashion of an aggressive collections agency, Campbell Hightower & Adams in Arizona started bombarding the company with phone calls and emails in June 2017, picking up where the Loews Madison Hotel had left off,” the Beast reports. “A collector, identified only as ‘Sherie,’ jotted down notes when she repeatedly communicated with Don Jr.’s executive assistant, Kara Hanley.” This reportedly led Hanley to blatantly deny that the company had any involvement in the bill.
This led to yet another Don Jr. aide weighing in on the conversation, as the report notes, “A few weeks later, Sherie notified the Trump Organization that she had just found out that yet another Don Jr. executive assistant, Lindsey Santoro, had initially requested the rooms and added Beach as the main contact for the deal. That information seemed to cement even further that the company was indeed involved.”
The Beast explains that move raised a lot of red flags.
“The District of Columbia’s AG hopes this evidence proves that the Trump Organization should remain part of the lawsuit, which seeks to seize money it deems was misused and divert it instead to another nonprofit. Otherwise, the civil investigation would continue only against the PIC (which is no longer active) and the Trump International Hotel Washington (which is being sold anyway),” the report reads. “When approached by The Daily Beast, the AG’s office pointed to the arguments it made in court. The Trump Organization’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. The collection agency didn’t return calls on Friday.”
“Notably, none of these documents described yet another layer of Trump Organization involvement: how company chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg puzzlingly assumed the responsibility of auditing the nonprofit PIC’s finances. Last summer, D.C. investigators wanted to interview him under oath, but he was then indicted for criminal tax fraud in New York City.”
You can read the bombshell full report here.
Featured image via Flickr/Trump White House Archives
