As interest groups, domestic and foreign, contemplate booking rooms in the Pennsylvania Avenue landmark turned Trump International Hotel to curry favor with the President, it is easy to assume that Trump’s involvement in that lease presents challenges just as abstruse as his overseas business operations. Those overseas entanglements may, indeed, require analysis of the Constitution’s hitherto rarely discussed Emoluments Clause. Conversely, understanding and addressing the problems raised by the Trump Organization’s 60-year, $180 million lease is far simpler.

GSA need not wait for constitutional experts to weigh in, nor for Trump’s lawyers to craft a comprehensive solution to appropriately distance Trump from his entire web of business interests. The lease presents relatively straightforward government contracting issues, and the contracting agency with responsibility for addressing those issues is GSA. To protect the integrity of the federal government’s procurement process, GSA must end its lease arrangement with President-elect Trump now.

When In Doubt, Read the Contract

The Post Office lease differs from many of Trump’s other business arrangements. That’s because, in writing the contract, the federal and D.C. governments determined, in advance, that elected officials could play no role in this lease arrangement. The contract language is clear:

“No … elected official of the Government of the United States ... shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom...”

The language could not be any more specific or clear. Donald Trump will breach the contract on January 20, when, while continuing to benefit from the lease, he will become an “elected official of the Government of the United States.”

The lease agreement, like many government contracts, is a lengthy document. Yet this clause represents a material (that is, significant) contractual term. While we recognize that some of the statutory ethics rules that generally apply to federal officials exempt the president and vice president, the prohibition on benefiting from the Old Post Office Pavilion lease does not exempt Trump. The terms of the contract were freely agreed to by the Trump Organization. Had President Obama or Vice President Biden (or any other elected official of the U.S. Government) attempted to participate in the original lease agreement in 2013, we are confident that GSA would have rejected their proposal. The lease’s plain language (a term favored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia) makes clear that Trump will be violating the lease’s terms when he becomes an elected official on Inauguration Day.

An Important Policy

The lease’s language is not meaningless boilerplate. The clause is consistent with longstanding prohibition on entering into contracts with federal employees. The prohibition extends to any “business concern or other organization owned or substantially owned or controlled by one or more government employees.” This “policy is intended to avoid any conflict of interest that might arise between the employees’ interests and their government duties, and to avoid the appearance of favoritism or preferential treatment by the Government toward its employees.”