Transcripts For CSPAN2 House Subcommittee Hearing On Trump I

CSPAN2 House Subcommittee Hearing On Trump International Hotel Lease July 13, 2024

We will now proceed with Opening Statements. I wish you all a good morning and welcome to the fourth hearing in the economic Emergency Management subcommittee. One of the purposes of this committee is to protect taxpayer dollars by ensuring they are spent effectively, efficiently and with transparency. That brings us to todays hearing which is entitled landlord and tenant. You can tell from the title that today we will be investigating fairly unprecedented situation. The federal government owns the building that houses President Trumps d. C. Hotel hotel. Since President Trump has declined, he is essentially acting as both the landlord and the tenant. Before i was elected to congress , over three decades Teaching College students about American Government and politics. Serious discussions about the legislature holding the executive Branch Accountable to the highest legal and ethical standards and that is exactly what we hope to do today. First lets start with some facts. All federal workers in federally elected officials take an oath to uphold the u. S. Constitution. Of course that includes the president , all members members of the administration and all of us in congress. The constitution contains two clauses that are pertinent to our topics today. One prevents an elected official from receiving any present or monument from any king, prince without the consent of congress. Congress has given this president no such consent. A second unrelated clause accepting any federal or state taxpayer dollars beyond this president ial salary. A lot of people may not be familiar with the term, but the Founding Fathers thought of it broadly as any payment or benefit. They included it in the constitution to prevent u. S. Government officials from accepting bribes from Foreign Government or from parts of our own government that may be trying i think we can all agree that that is a pet practice that the public and the members of this coming congress do not abide. Explicitly stating that the tenant may not use the premises to violate federal law. For any purpose or in any way. That, of course includes the constitution. Moreover, section 37 of the lease states no elected official of the government of the United States shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease or any benefit that may arise therefrom. Yet the president continues to have a personal stake in the hotel. When people stare trumps d. C. Hotel, he directly benefits. Despite all the legal and ethical issues that arise from this unprecedented situation, the agency that oversees the lease, they have not done a thing about it. In fact, agencies independent Inspector General who is here today conducted an exhaustive report that founds that the gsa recognized that the president business interest in the Old Post Office lead raised issues that might cause a breach. Despite this observation, the Inspector General found they decided not to address those obvious issues. The Inspector General call that improper. I think that is kind of the least of it. When you take an oath to uphold a constitution, you are are bound by that old. Officials have turned a blind eye to these legal and ethical issues. The gsa failed to implement basic recommendations made by the Inspector General. Instructed to conduct a formal legal review that includes consideration of the constitution monument clauses and the terms of the lease. As far as i know gsa has pretended to conduct that view. Also instructed to revise the language of their leases to make it even clearer that the constitution is relevant. They have not done so in any way that satisfies the Inspector General and have not done so in any way. In addition to the legal issues, they have agreed to turn over documents. The jurisdiction and we have a legitimate purpose to examine. In 2008, congress directed them to lease out the Old Post Office building in order to make a profit. Relying on the opinion, not of their attorneys, but of the tough business lawyers, refused to turn over any basic financial documents that could help us determine the lease. How can we know that taxpayers investments are being protected if we cannot examine the financial records of the hotel. How can we ensure that National Policy is not being swayed by those spending money at the hotel that benefits people at the highest levels of our government. Also preventing us from looking at legal memos that were drafted when Government Officials who were supposed to have terms of this lease decided to look the other way. It is shameful and yet it is what we have come to expect from an executive branch and rejects transparency at every turn. Imagine a situation like we are in today. The Founding Fathers were wise enough to put the clause right in the constitution. We should be wise enough to enforce it. Our first panel today, we will hear from the agency that oversees and from the Inspector General who found that the gsa did not fulfill its obligation under the constitution. The second panel we will hear from legal scholars who can shed more light. I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing your testimony in answering our questions and i now recognize Ranking Member for Opening Statement. Thank you, chairwoman. Once again, here we are in the drama of everything related to President Trump is bad. Instead of focusing on Critical Issues like Disaster Recovery, our crumbling infrastructure, we are here today trying to answer a constitutional question that is currently before the court that i would offer no one on this day is even able to be answered. We are looking at a constitutional question, but this this is all about the president and his business. We have other business before the subcommittee that is critical to the american taxpayer. Seventynine bills that have been referred. We have only acted on nine of them. We could be in a hearing today examining some of those proposals. National preparedness month. Here we are, at the original plan for this hearing today was to focus on recovery areas. We are here focusing on an issue because of the perception of wrongdoing. Based on our markup last week, remarks by members at the markup, i am sure there are members on both sides of the aisle that would you it as a critical responsibility of this committee to address Disaster Relief. Right now, more than half the state and territories are still impacted by 73 open major disasters and emergency declarations. Additionally, spending over 5 billion a year a year on lease space. Struggling to pay for the basic maintenance of the building. Calling the gsa not to talk about those important things, but rather a decision that has already been made. A conclusion that has already been made by my colleagues. We are here today because of a lease that was endorsed by, advocated by democrats. Signed off on by democrats. Negotiated and executed under president barack obama. A lease where nearly all of the decisions were made before and after the election were made by the obama administration. Somehow it is the president s fault and this one decision, made after the president was sworn in, was done i a career Public Servant. Even with that, if you focus just on that, we have a longterm career Public Servant with leadership that is appointed making decisions and here we are today, the Inspector General still found there was no undue influence in that decision i am just at a loss for words when you look at this. Gsa has produced documents at the request of members over 10,000 pages nearly nearly 3800 documents that have been produced to the o po and more is expected. Colleagues would argue that the gsa is not responding to their request. Let me be clear on this as well. I am a strong supporter of transparency and oversight and access to information. When those demands start taking on an outside, beyond the mission, core mission of what is happening, we have the responsibility to make sure those requests are not only reasonable and legitimate, but not just a fishing expedition. Republicans, members and myself including sent a letter of february requesting documents on which they base their analysis and conclusion in her reports. It is factually incorrect. The assertion has been disputed by legal experts. It contains its own legal analysis on unsettled constitutional questions currently before the court. Now, the chairwoman she has talked about those constitutionally protected areas in our rights of oversight as the legislative body and indeed, it is. But this question is one that has to be resolved by the court, not by the legislative body. If we want to change the law to make sure we can change it lets go ahead and introduce something but to date nothing has been introduced and no markups on that given this issue and the facts using the proceedings is critical for us to verify every bit of the oigs report and accuracy and to understand the basis of that report we request requests for the oig report on the fbi headquarters however, so far on that we receive 177 document tunnels are largely publicly available Legal Research documents with law review articles that they use for constitutional analysis. To me that is unresponsive. I hope we can get back to the real work and i hope we can make sure that once again the committee operates in a bipartisan fashion. Todays hearing is certainly not that with that, i yield back. I think the Ranking Member and i now recognize the chairman of the tni committee who has spent some time working on that issue and is quite familiar with the documents that have been released and the players and all the issues americanized the Ranking Member. It is nearly three years since i had first questioned gsa regarding the lease and Pretty Simple, no member democrats were elected official of the government of the United States or government of the District Of Columbia shall be amended to any share part as a maze or two benefits that may arise therefrom. Now, the Ranking Member just went on and on the link below or here. We are here because President Trump ignoring all president s decided not to divest himself of his business interests and in particular, of the hotel, the trump hotel and in particular a hotel which has a lease that says no elected officials the benefit and the president was elected. He did not get a majority of the vote but was elected. To say that this committee should not be pursuing this with gsa in that instance is bizarre. Secondly, this building was leased because it was losing money and the idea was it would make money and we would get a share. You have to question whether gsa and they do things that are competent but you can always hide and come up with but we dont even know today the only statements that we have were either intentionally or unintentionally put online. Now they would say this is back in 16 and they would say that this is proprietary and to read through it this is nothing proprietary in this document but now gsa says congress is not entitled to those in they were released mistakingly. How do we know what the income is and how do we know how gsa is calculate in the profits and apparently thats the discretion of the Contracting Officer. Thats a career officials that he referred to in this career official opined in november of 16 and there was absurd that anyone question this lease or the emoluments cost is a Contracting Officer. I asked a series of questions from a former official is this how Contracting Offices work human and then he went on in email to ivanka trump to say i want to get together with you and drink coffee and tell you about my great trip to new york. This is a Public Servant looking out after the Public Interest and is still the Contracting Officer and still has discretion in how the catholic the profits we dont know whether he gets a damn penny out of the thing or not. Heres the same as they give to us. Thats it. The cover page. The cover page is what congress is entitled to. What is the income you mac we dont know. What the prophet . We dont know. What is the government getting . We dont know. The gentleman does not want to know whether the taxpayers are getting ripped off or not . Thats extraordinary to me. Extraordinary. Will the gentleman yield . No, i will not yield. You went over time and i wont go the chairman went over time to. I have not gone over yet but you will make me. And then i asked for the legal opinions and we cant see them or have them. We cant see the legal opinions that are been questioned by the id but the gentleman knows they are fine and the legal opinions. The gentleman knows we get 3 million a year from the lease and the gentleman does know th that. We dont know on a monthly basis what the income of the hotel is and what or how they calculate this and what percent we are getting so the gentleman knows were getting more money under this lease than the previously. The gentleman is out of ord order. Thank you madam chair. You are not the chair. Will you be quiet now . Pinky. Heres the legal opinion that we recently received from gsa. Didnt come from we never seen a document out of the general counsels office and there is a general counsels office and its a document from michael [inaudible] and attorneys at law and this is the only legal opinion we have and that happens to be the trump hotel attorney. This whole thing is so out of line in terms of gsa oversight of the Public Interest in of the lease of this hotel from day o one. Date one. That is why we are here today. We are here principally because this president failed to divest himself of conflict of interest and put himself and expose himself not only in violation of belief but also to the emoluments clause of the constitution of the United States, both foreign and mastic. Thats right we are here today right on time. Thank you. The chair now recognizes the Ranking Member of the tni committee. Thank you, madam chair. We use to hear over and over and over again when republicans were in the majority are we doing infrastructure and why are we doing in the structure and resin infrastructure bill . That question is still valid today yet here we are in a politically motivated hearing talking about the Old Post Office in light of the disasters this year i think we should focus on making the Community Reform efforts working instead but here we are again in a politically motivated hearing. We need to make sure our communities have the tools to prepare and recover from the next disaster. We saw just last week parts of texas being hammered by Tropical Storm melbourne. My home district in missouri is still recovering from these reporting and the devastating homes and people that still have not gotten back into their houses. In many communities that have a long way to go when comes to recovering from the last two and hurricane system instead todays hearing will be nothing more than a political spectacle and a chance for the president s opponents to undermine him continue to do their search for further their case on impeachment and that is what this case is about. Instead of working on Disaster Preparedness or any other of the countless number of infrastructure items that are clearly more important in this like to fix roads and bridges were instead were listening to politically motivated criticisms of the president and i know we Work Together in a bipartisan manner on this committee and i believe we can still do that if we put politics aside. Instead, this is a political distraction and takes us away from the important work this committee should be doing and with that, i yield back. Thank you, mr. Gray. Today we like to welcome our witnesses. The first panel we have mr. Daniel matthews, public building commissioner for the u. S. Gsa and we have the honorable [inaudible]. Look forward to your testimony and without objection our witnesses for statements will be included in the record. Since your written testimony has been made part of the record the subcommittee request that you limit your testimony to five minutes as well. At this point we will begin with mr. Matthews. Good morning. Members of the subcommittee my name is dan matthews was sworn in as commissioner of the Public Building Service in august 2017. Before that i served as majority and minority staff of the subcommittee for almost 15 years. I want to thank you for your help in securing Senate Authorization as well. Also i like to be discussed how pbs the tagging so most of the changes or challenges in federal real estate identified over the last decade. These problems include an overreliance on cause and the need reform the courthouse from construction program. In september 2017 gsa has got a halfmillion square feet from its portfolio and negotiated rental rates 11 below market as compared to the hist

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