Did Ivanka Trump Orchestrate Inflated Prices for Her Dad’s Inauguration Event?

So let’s go back over a story we talked about last week.

Out of the mountain of scandals and investigations coming at Donald Trump, the latest to emerge, springing forth from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office centers around the newly elected president’s inaugural committee, and how the funds raised by the committee were spent.

If you’ll remember, former Trump personal  lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen’s home, offices, and hotel room were raided in April. Of those things discovered were secret recordings Cohen made of himself speaking with Trump, and others from the Trump orbit.

Among those recordings was a conversation between Cohen and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff – a former adviser to Melania Trump, and a vendor to the inaugural event.

Wolkoff was apparently concerned about how the money for the inauguration was being spent, and that has tipped off investigators, who have concerns about foreign governments attempting to “buy access” to the incoming administration,  through secret donations to the inauguration fund.

Now, however, we have a bit more about what investigators are looking at, and perhaps, what Wolkoff’s concerns may have been.

And it involves Donald Trump’s favored child, Ivanka Trump.

Apparently, according to information uncovered and reported on in ProPublica, Daddy’s little girl saw a way to benefit the family company with the record amount of funds raised for the event.

The inauguration paid the Trump Organization for rooms, meals and event space at the company’s Washington hotel, according to interviews as well as internal emails and receipts reviewed by WNYC and ProPublica.

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”

Could that be what Wolkoff was stressing about, in her conversation with Michael Cohen?

“The fact that the inaugural committee did business with the Trump Organization raises huge ethical questions about the potential for undue enrichment,” said Marcus Owens, the former head of the division of the Internal Revenue Service that oversees nonprofits.

I’ll say that this is an issue that has been brought up before,  in regards to the Trump’s using the office of the presidency as a money-making venture.

So remember Rick Gates?

Gates was the partner of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. You all know that sordid tale.

Gates, however, also worked as the deputy to the chairman of the inaugural, and just as he found himself caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, he’s back, because the red flags around his work with the inauguration are definitely there.

Apparently,  Gates was asking some vendors to take their payments directly from donors.

Does that strike anyone else as fishy?

Yeah. It made some of those around him with the committee, as well as vendors uncomfortable, as well.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors in New York have opened a criminal investigation into whether the inaugural committee misspent money and whether donors gave in return for political favors, citing people familiar with the matter. In addition, The New York Times reported that prosecutors are examining whether foreigners illegally funnelled money to the inauguration.

The White House has tried to blow off this latest investigation, saying it has nothing to do with the president or Mrs. Trump, but other members of the inauguration committee say that he was briefed often on the planning of the event.

There’s still over $40 million of the $107 million raised that is unaccounted for.

Greg Jenkins, who led George W. Bush’s second inauguration, was perplexed by the Trump team’s mammoth fundraising haul. “They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events and they raise at least twice as much as we did,” Jenkins told WNYC and ProPublica this year. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”

We know he had several big donors, such as Sheldon Adelston and AT&T, but that doesn’t account for where all the money came from.

With about a month to the inauguration, planners reached out to Ivanka Trump, expressing their concern over how much money was being charged by her family’s Washington hotel.

She put Gates in touch with Mickael Damelincourt, who was the managing director of the hotel.

He gave them an estimate of $700,000 for about four days of use of the Presidential ballroom and meeting rooms.

That’s when Wolkoff balked.

In an email to Ivanka Trump and Gates, Wolkoff, who had previously managed the Metropolitan Museum’s annual gala and fashion shows at Lincoln Center, expressed discomfort with the price.

“I wanted to follow up on our conversation and express my concern,” Wolkoff wrote in the December email.

“These events are in PE’s [the president-elect’s] honor at his hotel and one of them is for family and close friends. Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge,” she wrote, noting that other locations would be provided to the inaugural committee for free.

“I understand that compared to the original pricing this is great but we should look at the whole context,” Wolkoff wrote, suggesting a day rate of $85,000, less than half of the Trump hotel’s offer.

When can a business owner not charge whatever they want for their business or services? Asking for a friend.

It would appear that all the events surrounding the inauguration of the 45^th president were held at Trump properties, and the tax headache that could be waiting is tremendous (that is, if we ever got to see Trump’s taxes).

The day before Trump’s swearing in, the inaugural committee hosted a Leadership Luncheon in the hotel’s Presidential Ballroom, featuring his cabinet nominees and major donors. “This is a gorgeous room,” the president-elect told the crowd. “A total genius must have built this place.” And the night of the inauguration itself, Trump’s family and close allies such as Sean Hannity celebrated into the early morning at an exclusive after-party in the Trump hotel’s grand lobby. Thousands of red, white and blue balloons were released from the rafters.

Some vendors for the inauguration became concerned when Gates, a top inaugural committee official, asked them to take payments outside of the normal committee invoicing process, according to two people with knowledge of what happened. He proposed that they be paid for their work directly from a would-be donor rather than by the committee. Gates told the vendors that the inaugural committee had received pledges of more money than was initially targeted, and, therefore, he wished to reduce the publicly reported sum raised.

Seriously. Does anybody else, given what we already know about this administration, and about Rick Gates,  see that as super-sketchy?

So this makes six active investigations against this president, or those surrounding him.

At what point do we start getting concerned?