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This Week at the Trump Hotel—Lots of Money:
In lieu of our usual feature on the happenings at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., the president has provided us with a rare look at some financials that go to the heart of the hotel’s moral hazard.
According to financial disclosures filed with the Office of Government Ethics this week, Trump took in more than $40 million in income from the hotel last year. That’s compared to less than $20 million he reported from January 2016 through April 2017. There’s some overlap there, which makes a precise comparison difficult, but measured on a monthly basis, Trump’s reported income from the hotel shot up about 174 percent. That’s compared to a 10 percent decline in monthly income from Mar-a-Lago, and a 14 percent decline from Trump Doral in Miami. (The biggest increase was for Trump’s golf club in Dubai: The president's monthly income from that club skyrocketed by more than 1,350 percent last year.)
The Trump Hotel’s success will not come as a surprise to anyone who’s spent time there. On any given night of the week, you’re likely to run across at least one Trump White House official, allied lobbyist or operative, foreign dignitary, Cabinet secretary, or supportive media personality. Trade associations and PACs and political influencers who want to get into the good graces of the president’s inner circle would be foolish not to spend some time at its gilded lobby bar nibbling on the complimentary almonds and jelly beans.
Few hotels, even in Washington, can boast the competitive advantage of serving up political good will. It’s a powerful—and, for Trump, lucrative—draw.
Lobbying, Corruption, and a Pair of Sunglasses:
As it ramped up its D.C. practice early in the Trump administration, Ballard Partners, arguably the most powerful lobbying firm in Trump’s Washington, brought on a big name: Otto Reich, Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Venezuela. Reich remains a senior counselor to the firm, according to his LinkedIn page.
At the time, Reich was engaged in a vicious legal fight with a Spanish businessman, Alejandro Betancourt, stemming from allegedly ill-gotten gains from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and ensuing efforts, Reich claimed, to bribe him for his services and damage him professionally when he refused. Reich’s case kept getting thrown out on jurisdictional grounds. He eventually appealed to the Supreme Court, which, on Oct. 2, officially declined to hear the case.
Three days later, Reich’s employers at Ballard went into business with Betancourt.
Lobbying records show that on Oct. 5, 2017, Ballard began representing a sunglasses company called Hawkers USA, owned by Betancourt’s Saldum Ventures. It was the first time Hawkers engaged a U.S. lobbying firm. Ballard worked on “general government, tax, and trade issues, policies, and regulations” until May 1, when it terminated the contract.
That same day, Madrid newspaper El Mundo reported that Betancourt is under investigation in Spain for alleged money laundering. The investigation could belatedly vindicate Reich and others who have made similar allegations, such as Thor Halvorssen, a Venezuelan dissident and human-rights activist who for years has accused Betancourt of pillaging Venezuela. But it might also raise questions about the work Ballard did for Betancourt’s company—and why it signed a client that its own adviser surely knew had some major legal baggage.
Cut-Rate Cash-Out for #Metoo Congressman: Disgraced former congressman Blake Farenthold is refusing to pay back the $84,000 in taxpayer funds used to settle sexual-harassment allegations by his former communications director. Meanwhile, he’s already back on the taxpayer payroll.
Farenthold has landed a lobbying gig for the Port of Port Lavaca, Texas, just north of Corpus Christi. The job pays just $160,000 per year, $14,000 less than the Texas Republican was making on the Hill. It’s a testament to his poor standing in Washington that he wasn’t able to land the high-six/low-seven-figure corporate and lobbying gigs that so many of his former colleagues have.
On its face, Farenthold is going a more honorable route, returning to his district to work for a local economic engine. But peer deeper, and hallmarks of D.C.’s revolving door are apparent. In his new position, Farenthold will presumably help Port Lavaca land federal funding for upgrades to its shipping docks. He did the same in Congress, helping to secure full federal funding for the county’s port authority to undertake a $2.14 million dredging project.
As he steered pork to the port authority, its chairman, Randy Boyd, was donating to Farenthold’s campaign. He gave $17,800, including max-out donations in the last two cycles. And it just so happened that in that time, Boyd’s company, RLB Contracting, has won millions of dollars in federal contracts to dredge the port of Port Lavaca.
The port authority, Boyd said on the news of Farenthold’s hiring, “looks forward to the services Blake can provide in assisting the port with matters in Washington, D.C.”
Mystery Client Behind Trump Alums’ Ukraine Lobbying:
Avenue Strategies, a firm stacked with Trump campaign alumni, has terminated its lobbying contract on behalf of Ukrainian political leader Yulia Tymoshenko after less than two months. But it’s still not clear who hired them in the first place.
In March, Avenue registered to work on Tymoshenko’s behalf “through Two Paths LLC,” a Delaware corporation, according to its foreign-agent paperwork. But Tymoshenko never authorized that work, said Jim Slattery, a former congressman who has represented Tymoshenko for years. She also has nothing to do with Two Paths LLC, Slattery said. “I’ve been assured that she did not retain them,” he told me. “I can only speculate that perhaps somebody else thought they were doing her a favor.”
So who’s behind Two Paths LLC? In FARA forms, it lists its address as a Manhattan condo owned by Ukrainian-American lawyer Marlen Kruzhkov, who also signed the Avenue contract on Two Paths’ behalf. But Kruzhkov appears to simply be the company’s legal representative. According to his official bio, he “counts among his clientele numerous entities and high net-worth individuals in Russia, the Ukraine, and other countries in the former Soviet Union.”
Two Paths is incorporated in Delaware, which provides no public information on the corporate structures of companies based in the state. So who, exactly, hired Avenue Strategies? Unless someone involved decides to say, we may never know.
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