The documents James sought included a scorecard GSA used to rank Trump’s bid against those of other developers who proposed leasing and redeveloping the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion downtown. That information could fit into James’s broader effort to show a pattern of Trump giving false information to business partners, banks and insurers to secure loans and other deals.
James’s request appears to differ from previous inquiries into Trump’s hotel, which largely focused on whether he should have been allowed to retain the deal while in office. After Trump was elected, he ignored calls from Democrats to sell his stake in the lease to avoid conflicts of interest.
Trump is now working to sell that lease, in a deal that could net his company $100 million in profits, and the negotiations have coincided with renewed scrutiny from lawmakers and prosecutors.
In October, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), issued a report raising concerns about whether Trump had misled the GSA in pursuing the deal. Maloney and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) wrote to GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan alleging that Trump “’concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from GSA when bidding on the Old Post Office Building lease’ and called for an investigation.