Not The Onion:
During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”
[…] Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s ethics lawyer, said: “When contacted by someone working on the inauguration, Ms. Trump passed the inquiry on to a hotel official and said only that any resulting discussions should be at a ‘fair market rate.’ Ms. Trump was not involved in any additional discussions.”
Mirijanian did not provide evidence that Ivanka Trump sought a fair market rate.
I believe “rack rate” is the industry term. They can jack up the rates during peak demand, but if the Inaugural Committee was charged far more than, um, external customers, that could be a bit problematic for Ivanka.
Because overcharging runs in the family. Fred Trump Was investigated by the U.S. Senate for war profiteering:
In 1954 he was investigated by a Senate committee for wildly overcharging the government on his public contracts. In a 2,700 apartment building near Coney Island called Beach Haven, he allegedly overcharged the government by a whopping $3.7 million.
And of course Fred’s children overcharged him for building supplies via the fraudulent All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992.