Gulf states, China and Malaysia spent more than $750,000 on a Washington hotel owned by Donald Trump during his presidency, according to documents released by Congress on Monday and cited by AFP.

The Republican billionaire, who is expected to announce Tuesday that he will run for a second term, has kept a hotel in his name near the White House since his election in 2016.

He was accused of a “conflict of interest” because he was visited by foreign delegations. After several twists and turns, the US Supreme Court dismissed the case in January 2021 without disclosing the details of the charges.

But a Democratic-controlled House committee recently obtained documents from Mazars, the company that manages the Trump Organization’s accounts.

They show that “six countries spent more than $750,000 at President Trump’s hotels, paying up to $10,000 a night for luxury rooms,” said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the committee. “At the same time, they are trying to influence US foreign policy,” she added in a statement.

In 2017, for example, Malaysia spent almost US$260,000 to host Prime Minister Najib Razak and his entourage on a state visit while he was being investigated by US justice for embezzling billions of dollars from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, according to the document.

In 2018, the Qatari authorities paid more than $300,000 for this hotel on the eve of the visit of Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. And even China, whose relations with the United States are more tense, spent almost 20 thousand dollars in this hotel in 2017 through its embassy in Washington, states the commission.

“In light of these revelations,” Carolyn Maloney wrote to the National Archives to obtain more documents, with the goal, she said, of proposing legislation to monitor the affairs of future presidents.

Donald Trump sold the hotel in May 2022 for $375 million.