Rep. Elijah Cummings was among those in Congress who demanded more action from the GSA. | Getty House Dems: Trump's Post Office lease presents 'egregious conflict of interest'

Top House Democrats are calling on the General Services Administration to explain how it plans to handle legal concerns presented by Donald Trump’s lease of the Old Post Office building in Washington, where the president-elect recently opened a hotel.

Trump is leasing the historic building on Pennsylvania Avenue from the GSA, a setup that has raised conflict-of-interest concerns among legal experts given that, as president, Trump will appoint the head of the agency. The lease, signed in 2013, is for 60 years and $180 million.


The GSA released a statement earlier this week saying that it “plans to coordinate with the president-elect’s team to address any issues that may be related to the Old Post Office building.”

In a letter Wednesday to GSA administrator Denise Turner Rother, Reps. Elijah Cummings, Peter DeFazio, Gerald Connolly, and André Carson demanded more action. Arguing that “a clear and very real conflict … will be triggered the moment Mr. Trump is sworn in as President of the United States unless concrete steps are taken now to avert it,” they requested a briefing on the issue.

Specifically, the lawmakers noted that the lease includes a clause “specifically barring any ‘elected official of the Government of the United States’ from deriving ‘any benefit’ from the agreement.” Given that Trump will soon occupy the White House, they asserted, his swearing in will qualify as a breach of contract.

“We do not see this as an ambiguous provision, but as a strict and categorical ban,” they wrote.

They also took issue with what they contended is “the general and egregious conflict of interest posed by his appointing the GSA Administrator who will oversee this lease with his hotel.”

They cited, among other points, a Washington Post op-ed from experts Steven Schooner and Daniel Gordon, who called on Trump and the agency to negotiate a termination of the lease and the GSA to breach contract and end it if the Trump Organization does not agree.

The letter requests that the GSA brief the lawmakers by Dec. 7 on “steps” the agency is “now taking to protect the interest of taxpayers with regard to the lease” as well as information on communications between Trump and the GSA on the issue before or after the election.

The contention over the Post Office lease is one of many concerns legal experts and Democrats have raised over the potential conflicts of interest presented by Trump’s business empire. Critics and ethics lawyers have been calling on Trump to divest his businesses to resolve the issues, rather than merely delegate management of them to his children.

On Wednesday, Trump indicated that he plans to address the conflict-of-interest concerns, writing on Twitter that “legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations.”

It remains unclear whether Trump intends to divest his businesses, or simply remove himself from the day-to-day operations of his company, as he previously suggested he would do. Ethics experts warn that would be insufficient.

The hotel, in particular, has been the focus of recent criticism. The Kingdom of Bahrain has reserved space to hold a reception there next month, which prompted a rebuke from Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer. Painter argues that a transaction between Trump’s company and a foreign state would be unconstitutional.