Last April, telecom giant T-Mobile announced a megadeal: a $26 billion merger with rival Sprint, which would more than double T-Mobile’s value and give it a huge new chunk of the cellphone market.
But for T-Mobile, one hurdle remained: Its deal needed approval from the Trump administration.
The next day, in Washington, staffers at the Trump International Hotel were handed a list of incoming “VIP Arrivals.”
That day’s list included nine of T-Mobile’s top executives — including its chief operating officer, chief technology officer, chief strategy officer, chief financial officer and its outspoken celebrity chief executive, John Legere.
They were scheduled to stay between one and three days.
But it was not their last visit.
Instead, T-Mobile executives have returned to President Trump’s hotel repeatedly since then, according to eyewitnesses and hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post.
By mid-June, seven weeks after the announcement of the merger, hotel records indicated that one T-Mobile executive was making his 10th visit to the hotel.
Legere appears to have made at least four visits to the Trump hotel, walking the lobby in his T-Mobile gear.
These visits highlight a stark reality in Washington, unprecedented in modern American history.
Trump the president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump the businessman owns a hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania.
Legere swore off Trump hotels in 2015 after Trump wrote on Twitter that “T-Mobile service is terrible” and “I don’t want it in my buildings.”
.@JohnLegere T-Mobile service is terrible! Why can’t you do something to improve it for your customers. I don’t want it in my buildings.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2015
Legere subsequently wrote tweets that said, “I will obviously leave your hotel right away based on this,” and “I am so happy to wake up in a hotel where every single item isn’t labeled ‘Trump’ and all the books and TV is about him.”
Legere has now deleted those tweets.
Last week, Legere gave Trump hotels a much better review when interviewed by a Post reporter.
“It’s become a place I feel very comfortable,” Legere said.
He also praised the hotel’s location, next to one of the departments that must approve the company’s merger.
“It’s currying favor with the president. It’s disturbing, because it’s another secret avenue for currying favor with the government,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.
She said that even if they weren’t directly ordered by Trump, the president’s appointees might feel pressured to help Trump’s customers. That might undermine public confidence in the decisions that result, Krumholz said.
The visits by T-Mobile executives cumulatively are probably worth tens of thousands of dollars to the Trump Organization, the president’s company, which he still owns despite criticism from government ethics experts.
Since Trump was elected, his hotel has been patronized by other groups with lobbying interests in Washington: foreign embassies, industry associations, religious groups. Lobbyists working for the Saudi government — a close U.S. ally that has grown closer under Trump — paid for 500 hotel rooms in the first four months after Trump was elected.