A stay by Gov. Paul LePage at the Trump International Hotel in Washington in early 2017 is playing a key role in a federal lawsuit against the president by the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte issued an opinion Wednesday that said the state and district have legal standing to pursue their lawsuit, which charges Trump with violating the Constitution by mixing his business interests with his official work as president.
Messitte cited a visit by LePage to Trump International and the governor’s subsequent appearance with Trump at a news conference as an example of how Trump may have received a financial benefit from another government figure, a potential violation of the Constitution’s “Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clause.”
LePage’s stay at Trump International in February 2017 was first revealed by the Portland Press Herald after a public records request for the travel receipts of LePage and his Maine State Police security detail. The state Department of Public Safety partially complied with the request for travel receipts, which revealed that the governor’s security team stayed at the hotel and purchased room service meals from the hotel’s restaurant. But LePage’s office still hasn’t produced copies of his expense reports a year after the public records request.
“Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that the President is violating the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution by reason of his involvement with and receipt of benefits from the Trump International Hotel and its appurtenances in Washington, D.C., as well as the operations of the Trump Organization with respect to the same,” Messitte wrote in his 47-page opinion. As supporting evidence, the judge singles out LePage’s visits to the hotel.
“In addition, at least one State – the State of Maine – patronized the Hotel when its Governor, Paul LePage, visited Washington to discuss official business with the Federal Government, including discussions with the President. Indeed, on one of those trips, the President and Governor LePage appeared together at a news conference at which the President signed an executive order to review orders of the prior administration that established national monuments within the National Park Service, which could apply to a park and national monument in Maine, which President Obama had established over LePage’s objections in 2016.”
Donald Trump, when he was a Republican presidential candidate, greets Gov. Paul LePage in Portland in March 2016. In letting a lawsuit against President Trump go forward, a federal judge cites LePage’s stay at the Trump Organization’s hotel in 2017 when he was on official business with the federal government that included discussions with the president.
Later in the opinion, Messitte returns to the subject of LePage’s visit.
“Leaving aside how Maine’s citizens may have felt about the propriety of their Governor living large at the Hotel while on official business in Washington, the fact that States, other than Maryland or the District of Columbia (while, not a State) might patronize the Hotel while on official business rather clearly suggests that Maryland and the District of Columbia may very well feel themselves obliged, i.e., coerced, to patronize the Hotel in order to help them obtain federal favors,” Messitte wrote.
Reference to Maine begins on page 5
SPOKESWOMAN: NO QUID PRO QUO
LePage’s press secretary, Julie Rabinowitz, said the governor’s stay at the Trump hotel was not an attempt to influence the president.
“The governor chooses hotels based upon several factors including price, availability and security,” Rabinowitz wrote in an email to the Press Herald. “He has stayed at many different hotels in Washington, D.C., and any insinuation or speculation that a stay in a Trump hotel is made with an expectation or hope of some type of quid-pro-quo is false and irresponsible.”
LePage reacted to the decision Wednesday night by calling the judge an “imbecile” in an interview with WGME-TV.
“I didn’t realize I could buy the president so cheap, a night in his hotel and he’s in my back pocket,” LePage told the station. “That’s all I’m gonna say. The judge that did that is an imbecile! He’s a complete imbecile. That’s all I can tell you. Any District Court judge, whether it’s state or federal, puts that in the paper because I stayed in the hotel is an absolute imbecile. I hope it goes national. I hope he hears it because he’s an absolute imbecile.”
The governor’s office has yet to fully comply with the Press Herald’s public records requests in March 2017 under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. However, state police documents showed that the governor’s security team, which is required to accompany him on his travels, routinely paid $300 to $500 per night – and sometimes as much as $750 per night – for rooms at exclusive hotels in a downtown Washington area that offers dozens of other, less expensive lodgings.
VALET PARKING FOR $56 PER DAY
During one trip, members of LePage’s travel group spent four nights at Trump International at a time when the governor met with top administration officials and testified before Congress on a national monument designation that he lobbied for the president to rescind.
The stay at Trump International – a magnet for foreign dignitaries and Washington insiders, and a symbol of the murky line between the president’s political and business interests – was a pricey one. All told, the tab for rooms, the $56-per-day valet parking and food – including $40 breakfasts from the hotel’s BLT Prime restaurant – totaled $2,250 just for LePage’s security team.
In November, Messitte ordered the president’s business to preserve relevant records and provided Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine – both Democrats – with subpoena power to acquire documents should the case advance, The Washington Post reported.
Although Trump no longer holds a management position with the Trump Organization, he still earns money from his hotels, golf courses and other real estate investments in the U.S. and several foreign countries.
The Trump Organization has referred questions about the case to the government.
Scott Thistle can be contacted at 713-6720 or at:
sthistle@pressherald.com
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