A18 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 , 2019
in the military, his Justice De-
partment’s support for allowing
employers to fire LGBTQ work-
ers based on sexual orientation
or gender identity, and his ad-
ministration’s termination of a
regulation prohibiting doctors
from discriminating against
transgender patients as evi-
dence that the president is not
an ally.
Last week, board member
Jennifer Horn stepped down
over the endorsement, saying
there was “no world where I can
sit down at the dining room
table and explain to my chil-
dren that I just endorsed Don-
ald Trump for president.”
Jordan Evans, another mem-
ber, also left the group last week
and published an op-ed in the
Advocate condemning the Log
Cabin leadership for aligning
itself with Trump.
“It seems that the ‘premier
Republican organization for
LGBTQ+ conservatives’
couldn’t care less about which
form of acceptance qualifies as
passable allyship and would
instead willfully embrace an
administration notorious for
hollow words, fairweather
friends, and a seemingly end-
less number of cuts for us to
endure,” Evans wrote.
Several other members have
also left the group, the Blade
reported.
After the Log Cabin endorse-
ment, Trump called it an “hon-
or” and claimed, “Some of my
biggest supporters are of that
community.”
The Log Cabin Republicans
refused to endorse Trump in
2016, and according to exit polls
he won just 14 percent of the
LGBTQ vote.
[email protected]BY COLBY ITKOWITZ
The executive director of the
Log Cabin Republicans, a group
for conservatives who support
gay rights, is the latest person to
resign over the organization’s
endorsement of President
Trump.
Jerri Ann Henry, the first
woman to lead the group, ten-
dered her resignation Monday,
spokesman Charles Moran con-
firmed. The Washington Blade
first reported the news of her
departure.
Moran did not provide a
reason for Henry’s exit, but the
Blade reported that she left
because of her disapproval of
the Trump endorsement.
Robert Kabel, chairman of
the group, and Jill Homan, vice
chairwoman, wrote an Aug. 15
op-ed in The Washington Post
endorsing Trump’s reelection
next year because, in their view,
“Trump has followed through
on many of his commitments to
the United States, including
taking bold actions that benefit
the LGBTQ community.”
Henry’s name was not in-
cluded on the op-ed, suggesting
discord in the group’s top ranks.
Kabel and Homan cited
Trump’s stated desire to stop
the spread of HIV/AIDS in 10
years and his efforts to “end the
criminalization of homosexual-
ity” globally as reasons he
earned their support. But
LGBTQ advocates critical of the
president point to Trump’s ban
on transgender people servingerosion of credibility at the De-
partment of Justice.”
It’s difficult to determine
whether Barr will pay market
rate for the event, as the Justice
Department official asserted he
would. The contract, sent to Barr
at his Northern Virginia home,
calls for a minimum of $100 per
person for food and beverages
before adding 35 percent for
taxes and tip. It requires that
Barr pay at least pay $31,500,
even if he cancels the event.
The hotel’s publicly available
menu lists a “banquet dinner” as
costing $115 per person for two
hours plus $30 per person for
each additional hour. A hosted
bar costs $29 for the first hour
per person and an additional $
per person for each additional
hour. If Barr opted for that level
of service at those prices, the food
and beverage bill for 200 guests
would probably top $45,000.
Hotels typically have lots of
available space on Sunday nights,
leading them to offer less expen-
sive rates. A contract the hotel
signed with Virginia Women for
Trump for a Monday event in the
summer of 2018, obtained sepa-
rately by The Post, required a
$3,050 room rental fee and a
$39,000 banquet fee for a much
larger group, 818 people, though
it did not include an open bar.
Hempowicz said that if Barr
received a discount from the
hotel, it would give other Ameri-
cans dealing with the Justice
Department reason for concern,
whomever the party is for.
“If the attorney general gets a
discount while the Justice De-
partment defends the hotel in
court, that is not how the justice
system is supposed to work, and
it’s not how the Department of
Justice is supposed to work,” she
said.
[email protected]
[email protected]Matt Zapotosky contributed to this
report. More at washingtonpost.com/
businessporters, who clearly know a clear
avenue to curry favor with the
president, and that is to do busi-
ness with the president’s busi-
ness.”
White House aides, including
inside the White House Counsel’s
Office, have warned Trump and
Cabinet officials against making
official visits to his properties.
Barr’s event falls into a differ-
ent category. It isn’t an official
event; it’s a party. His contract
requires that he spend $4,500 to
rent the ballroom — designed by
Ivanka Trump before she joined
her father in the White House —
and $135 per person for a buffet
and open bar, a number that is
likely to adjust after Barr chooses
a menu.
Walter Shaub, a former direc-
tor of the Office of Government
Ethics who has been an outspo-
ken critic of Trump’s ethics rec-
ord, called Barr’s decision to book
Trump’s hotel “one of those
things that doesn’t violate the
rules, but it’s really troubling.”
“He keeps sending signals that
his loyalty is to a politician and
not to the country,” Shaub said.
“And it’s part of an ongoingclined to comment, citing the
company’s privacy policy. A
spokeswoman for the Mayflower
Hotel did not immediately re-
spond to a request for comment.
Barr’s decision to book the
Trump hotel is noteworthy, in
particular, because Justice De-
partment attorneys are defend-
ing the president’s business in
court. Trump’s D.C. hotel has
hosted a number of foreign gov-
ernments as clients, business
that has generated two lawsuits,
one from the attorneys general of
Maryland and the District, and
the other from about 200 Demo-
cratic members of Congress.
Both cases are being consid-
ered in federal court, and the
Justice Department is defending
the president’s position that he
has not run afoul of the anti-cor-
ruption provisions in the Consti-
tution called the domestic and
foreign emoluments clauses.
D.C. Attorney General Karl A.
Racine (D), a plaintiff in one of
the emoluments cases against
Trump, said Barr’s plans make
him fear “that all this does is it
normalizes conduct of presiden-
tial supporters or would-be sup-that ethics rules did not prohibit
him from hosting his annual
party at the Trump hotel,” said
the official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
the party is not a Justice Depart-
ment event.
Barr’s decision to book his
boss’s hotel marks the latest colli-
sion between Trump’s adminis-
tration and his business, which
the president no longer operates
but from which he still benefits
financially.
Trump said Monday that he
was likely to hold next year’s
Group of Seven international
summit at his golf resort in Doral,
Fla. Already the federal govern-
ment and GOP campaigns have
spent at least $1.6 million at his
properties since he entered of-
fice, according to a Post analysis,
though the actual figure is prob-
ably higher because of the diffi-
culty of obtaining up-to-date rec-
ords.
Barr, the nation’s top law en-
forcement official, has previously
faced criticism for adopting lan-
guage that hews closely to
Trump’s. For example, special
counsel Robert S. Mueller III
complained that Barr’s charac-
terization of his investigation —
which closely mirrored the presi-
dent’s — “did not fully capture the
context, nature, and substance”
of Mueller’s final report. Experts
have cited that and other exam-
ples in questioning Barr’s inde-
pendence from the president.
“It creates the appearance that
high-level political appointees or
allies of the president may feel
like they need to spend money at
the president’s businesses as a
show of loyalty, and that is some-
thing that makes me deeply un-
comfortable and should make
taxpayers deeply uncomfortable,”
said Liz Hempowicz, director of
public policy at the nonprofit
Project on Government Over-
sight.
The Trump Organization de-
clined to comment. Representa-
tives of the Willard Hotel de-
BARR FROM A
PowerPost
INTELLIGENCE FOR LEADERS WASHINGTONPOST.COM/POWERPOSTSome critics find rental ‘really troubling’
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Attorney General William P. Barr has signed a contract to hold his
annual holiday bash at President Trump’s D.C. hotel. A Justice
Department official said ethics experts had reviewed the decision.BY DAN LAMOTHE
On the eve of his departure,
the Navy’s top admiral said he is
satisfied with the behavior of
Navy Special Operations troops
“in aggregate,” despite some em-
barrassing incidents, but that the
service must continue to focus on
“the ethical dimension of what
we do.”
The Navy SEAL force has
launched a plan to emphasize the
importance of the law of armed
conflict, integrity and account-
ability, Adm. John Richardson
said in an interview with The
Washington Post. He attributed a
string of recent problems in part
to years of deployments.
“Your character is like a mus-
cle,” Richardson said, speaking in
his office last week, where
framed pictures had already
been taken off the walls in prepa-
ration for his departure. “It sort
of gets stronger when you train
it, and then it gets fatigued when
you strain it and you use it a lot.”
Richardson, who will retire,
handed over the reins as chief of
naval operations to Adm. Mi-
chael Gilday on Thursday during
a ceremony in Washington. He
became the service’s top officer
in 2015, presiding over a chal-
lenging period that included
growth in the Navy and two
disasters in which destroyers col-
lided with commercial vessels in
2017, killing 17 sailors.
The collisions exposed gaps in
how the service was training
crews and preparing ships to go
to sea. Richardson said he will
have failed if it is determined
that crews deploying now are not
ready to do so.
“Not a day goes by when I’m
not asking myself that exact
question, because what an amaz-
ingly high price we paid for that
— those 17 sailors who gave their
lives,” he said.
In the Special Operations
force, several Navy SEALs have
faced criminal charges this year,
including two who were accused
in the death of a Green Beret
soldier, Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar,
in Mali in 2017. One of the SEALs
in the case, Senior Chief Special
Warfare Operator Adam C. Mat-
thews, pleaded down to lesser
charges, while Senior Chief Spe-cial Warfare Operator Anthony
DeDolph still faces trial.
In another incident, a platoon
of Navy SEALs was sent home
from Iraq last month after a
female service member working
with them allegedly was sexually
assaulted by a senior enlisted
member of the platoon. The in-
vestigation into that incident is
ongoing.
Richardson said Army Gen.
Richard Clarke, the chief of U.S.
Special Operations Command,
launched an ethics review of
Special Operations units that
will inform how the Navy looks at
the issue. Clarke said the review
will address aspects of Special
Operations culture that include
education, recruiting and train-
ing.
Some Pentagon officials have
said that they do not see a link
between frequent deployments
in recent years and bad behavior,
but Richardson posited that it
could at least be a contributing
factor.
“If you think about when you
and I go home each night, you
know, we are with our friends
and our families, and those sorts
of righting forces keep us cen-
tered, and it’s all reinforcing,” he
said. “It strengthens our charac-
ter. But when you get way for-
ward-deployed for a long time,
those forces aren’t as strong.”
The issues stretch beyond the
SEALs.In the recent court-martial of
Special Warfare Operator Chief
Edward “Eddie” Gallagher, a
Navy SEAL who was accused of
fatally stabbing a wounded Is-
lamic State fighter in Iraq, Navy
officials allegedly used a tracking
bug in an email to spy on defense
attorneys and a journalist,
prompting the removal of a pros-
ecutor in the case.
Gallagher was acquitted of
most of the charges he faced in
July. Richardson assumed con-
trol of the case and two others
this month and launched a re-
view of the Navy Judge Advocate
General Corps. The admiral said
the service will bring in outside
experts to offer opinions.
In a separate action, the Navy
recently completed a review at
Richardson’s direction that ex-
amined administrative actions to
better handle bad behavior that
falls short of criminal conduct.
The resulting changes in the
Navy include the introduction of
an administrative letter of repri-
mand that will allow the service
to document misconduct in cases
in which other punishment is not
warranted or possible.
“It’s obviously in the best in-
terests of the Navy, but I think it’s
also in the best interests of that
sailor to get out of limbo, if you
will, and onto whatever path of
recovery that they may take,”
Richardson said.
[email protected]Departing admiral acknowledges
Navy’s struggle on character issues
NICHOLAS BROWN/U.S. NAVY
Adm. John Richardson directed a review of administrative actions
to better handle bad behavior that falls short of criminal conduct.Top official resigns
after LGBTQ group’s
Trump endorsement
Log Cabin Republicans’
executive director is
latest member to leaveWEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
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