Trump may have to dump D.C. hotel

NEW YORK -- Donald Trump may have to give up one property on Pennsylvania Avenue if he wants to move into another down the street.

One is the newly opened, glittering jewel in the president-elect's hotel empire. The other, of course, is the White House.

Whether he'll need to relinquish his stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., could come down to how a few words on a lease are interpreted.

Trump negotiated for more than a year to secure the rights to use the government-owned building where the hotel is housed. The resulting lease itself runs for hundreds of complicated and dull pages.

Dull, save for clause 37.19 on top of page 103, which suddenly has become the subject of great discussion among experts on government contracting law, and not a few Trump critics.

If some of the experts are correct -- a big if -- the first 43 words of this clause could force Trump to unload his equity stake in the hotel just down the street from the White House. The key part: No "elected official of the Government of the United States" shall be "admitted to any share or part of this Lease."

"He's going to have to divest himself of the hotel," said John Sindelar, a former senior adviser to the head of the General Services Administration, the government agency that negotiated the lease three years ago.

Sindelar left the agency in 2007.

Other contracting experts agreed, though not all of them. David Drabkin, once the GSA's senior procurement officer, said he thinks the clause doesn't apply to Trump because it only prohibits adding elected officials to the lease after it was signed, not banning original parties to it who subsequently get elected to office.

He added, though, a president leasing the building is "absolutely untenable" because of other conflict-of-interest issues.

The Trump Organization did not respond to emails asking for comment.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted legal documents were being prepared that would "take me completely out of business operations" but made no mention of selling his ownership interest.

He previously has said he planned to have three of his adult children run his business.

Contract experts said that likely would fall short of meeting the requirement for holding on to the hotel lease.

Since his election, government ethics lawyers have been urging Trump to sell his assets and put the money in a blind trust controlled by an outside party, not his children. They said that is the only sure way to avoid conflicts between his pursuit of private profit and the public good.