WASHINGTON – Six foreign governments — including China and Saudi Arabia — spent a total of more than $750,000 at former President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel in 2017 and 2018 while “seeking to influence American foreign policy,” according to documents released Monday by a House committee.

The House Oversight and Reform panel, which has been investigating whether the 76-year-old Trump used his office for personal enrichment, found that representatives of Malaysia, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also splurged on “lavish” rooms costing up to $10,000 a night following a review of documents from the 45th president’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP.

While the committee published the receipt documents for public review on Monday, they did not provide evidence that Trump had any knowledge of the foreign expenditures at his hotel.

The first questionable transaction happened in August 2017, when a delegation from the Chinese embassy spent nearly $20,000 at the luxury hotel two months before Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In a statement Monday, the committee’s chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) suggested the spending may have been on Trump’s mind in November 2017, when “he lavished praise on President Xi Jinping, and in contrast to his campaign, blamed the US for its trade deficit with China.”

“Other documents obtained by the committee indicate that the Trump Hotel may have sought business from both China and Russia around this time, despite the Trump Organization’s promise not to enter into any foreign deals while Mr. Trump was president,” Maloney added.

Also in late 2017, government officials from Saudi Arabia and the UAE began spending tens of thousands of dollars at the Trump hotel, adding up to at least $164,929 by mid-2018. In addition to the hotel rooms, Turkish officials incurred costs on renting ballrooms, ordering room service and paying $500 smoking fees, according to the receipts.

Guests “seemingly” included members of the Saudi royal family, according to the report, with receipts including the title “His Excellency” alongside redacted names.

Again, Maloney said the committee suspects the finances may have influenced Trump’s decision-making, noting that the former president fired then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13, 2018 while Saudi and Emirati officials were staying at the hotel.

“Saudi and Emirati officials had reportedly been lobbying President Trump to remove [Tillerson] for his role in intervening to stop a Saudi invasion of Qatar the previous summer,” the chairwoman claimed.

For its part, Qatar spent about $282,037 on an extended stay by its ruling Sheikh Al Thani family in the lead-up to an April 2018 official visit to the White House. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner also booked rooms on “several occasions” when the Sheikh Al Thani family stayed the night, according to the records.

“In early April 2018, President Trump welcomed the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to the White House where he praised Qatar’s record on combatting terrorism and referred to Al Thani as a ‘great gentleman,’” Maloney said.

In September 2017, the Malaysian government spent at least $259,724 at the hotel over an eight-day period leading up to then-Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak’s official visit to the White House on Sept. 12.

At the time, the Justice Department was investigating the Razak family “for looting a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and laundering the money through US financial institutions,” Maloney said. 

“Despite the ongoing DOJ investigation and other actions by Prime Minister Razak that had drawn criticism from human rights groups, President Trump lavished praise on Prime Minister Razak during his visit and thanked him for ‘all the investment you have made in the United States,’” Maloney said.

Razak was later prosecuted by the Malaysian government for his role in the money laundering scandal, known as 1MDB.

The documents also revealed that lobbyists for the Turkish government spent more than $86,000 at Trump’s hotel between September 2017 and April 2018 – just before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan May 16, 2017 visit to the White House, according to the records.

The Oversight committee suggested that may explain why Trump remained silent when Erdoğan’s bodyguards kicked, punched and choked US citizens protesting the Turkish president outside Ankara’s embassy in Washington.

“Documents obtained by the committee reveal that the Turkish Embassy sponsored two stays around the time of President Erdoğan’s visit and the attack on U.S. protestors,” Maloney said.

She added that the money could have also influenced Trump’s reported decision later that year to push the Justice Department to drop an investigation into money laundering and sanctions evasion by the Turkish state-owned financial institution, Halkbank.

Monday’s report came about a month after the same committee released receipts showing the Secret Service spent more that $1.4 million on Trump Organization hotels while protecting the 45th president and his family members on dozens of trips.

That report revealed that Trump hotels charged the Secret Service hundreds or thousands of dollars above the government rate for stays on multiple occasions – with some of the rooms costing as high as $1,185 per night.

Government rates refer to the maximum amount federal employees can spend on hotels for work purposes and are based on the average hotel rate for a given area during a certain time of year. 

“The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents’ frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former President’s self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former President Trump’s struggling businesses,” Maloney said at the time.