Ex-Trump ambassador's hotel faces $28,000 fine for illegal corporate reimbursements: report

Former President Donald Trump's one-time ambassador Gordon Sondland is in hot water, as a hotel he owns faces tens of thousands of dollars in fines, reported The Daily Beast on Friday.

"The Federal Election Commission slapped a $28,000 fine on the hotel company belonging to Trump’s former ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, for illegal corporate reimbursements totaling more than $100,000, according to documents released Friday," reported Roger Sollenberger. "In sworn testimony, the president of Provenance Hotels said he was 'acting under the directions' of Sondland personally, according to the FEC general counsel’s report, a claim the former ambassador disputed in his own affidavit."

The FEC first became aware of this arrangement, which took place between 2018 and 2019, on a tipoff from the company itself, said the report: "About $21,000 of the illicit donations went to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who downplayed the scandal and later asked President Donald Trump not to remove Sondland from his post, The New York Times previously reported; Trump fired him anyway," the article states.

Sondland became a household name for a short time during former President Donald Trump's first impeachment, brought over allegations that he obstructed aid to Ukraine as part of a bid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce and "investigation" into the family of now-President Joe Biden.

Trump called Sondland as a witness in his own defense, but legal experts argued that his testimony actually incriminated him further.

After that affair, Sondland sued former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for $1.8 million, alleging that Pompeo backed out of a promise to compensate him for his legal fees.