Trump has a secret lurking in the Eastern Bloc
A Romanesque façade, a restored clock tower, chandelier-lit guestrooms and original marble floors – these are just some of the luxurious features at Donald Trump’s former hotel in Washington.
After opening weeks before the US presidential election in 2016, it quickly became one of the world’s most talked about hotels.
By the end of 2018, princes, prime ministers, and premiers had flown from across the globe, coughing up tens of thousands of dollars to stay in one of the lavish 263 rooms.
And with Trump now the clear frontrunner to be the Republican nominee in November and challenge Joe Biden, the White House has released a report on how his personal business reaped the benefits of his time in office.
Drawing from actual receipts, it shows that Trump accepted almost $8 million in
payments from foreign states and their leaders.
The list includes top government officials from Albania and Kosovo, who paid more than $10,000 for a few nights, just to gain Trump’s backing.
Albania’s prime minister Edi Rama, several of his advisors, and minister of infrastructure and energy, Damian Gjiknuri, were among the guests at the International Hotel Washington.
Between 2017 and 2020, they spent $6,000 to influence Trump, the report claims.
Rama himself paid $1,158 during a visit in March 2018, at a time when Albania’s opposition leader, Lulzim Basha, had accused the ruling Socialist Party of endemic corruption and ties to organised crime.
According to the report, the PM’s stay was connected with his meeting with the now disgraced former FBI counterespionage agent Charles McGonigal, who was jailed in December 2023 for providing services to sanctioned Russian oligarch and Putin agent Oleg Deripaska.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that on March 4, Rama dined with Charles McGonigal, a former FBI counterintelligence chief, and Agron Neza, a New Jersey businessman who previously worked at an Albanian intelligence agency.
In the Balkans, the voice of superpowers like the US counts for a lot.
With Kosovo seeking to gain greater international recognition – including from neighboring Serbia – elevating Trump’s personal financial interests made sense.
Records cited in the report show that several officials from Kosovo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs including the then deputy prime minister and foreign minister Behgjet Pacolli stayed at the hotel in July 2018, spending nearly $5,000.
Social media posts indicate that other Kosovar officials visited the property again months later.
Kosovo eventually signed an economic cooperation agreement with Serbia at a White House event over which then-president Trump presided.
Congressman Jamie Raskin said in the report: ‘Trump, while holding the office of president, used his business entities to pocket millions of dollars from foreign states and royalty and never once went to Congress to seek its consent.
‘This report sets forth the records showing foreign government money and all the spoils from royals we can find pouring into hotels and buildings that the president continued to own during his presidency, all in direct violation of the Constitutional prohibition.
‘To be sure, we know about only some of the payments that passed into former president Trump’s hands during just two years of his presidency from just 20 of the more than 190 nations in the world through just four of his more than 500 businesses.’
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