Report: T-Mobile execs seeking deal OK stayed in Trump hotel

John Legere, chief executive officer of T-Mobile US Inc. (center) arrives at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., on June 27, 2018. Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer.
John Legere, chief executive officer of T-Mobile US Inc. (center) arrives at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., on June 27, 2018. Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer.

WASHINGTON -- Last April, telecommunications giant T-Mobile announced a planned $26 billion merger with rival Sprint, which would more than double T-Mobile's value and give it a huge new chunk of the cellphone market.

But for T-Mobile, one hurdle remained: Its deal needed approval from the Trump administration.

The next day, in Washington, staff members at the Trump International Hotel were handed a list of incoming "VIP Arrivals." That day's list included nine of T-Mobile's top executives -- including its chief operating officer, chief technology officer, chief strategy officer, chief financial officer and its outspoken celebrity chief executive, John Legere.

They were scheduled to stay between one and three days, but it was not their last visit.

Instead, T-Mobile executives have returned to President Donald Trump's hotel repeatedly since then, according to eyewitnesses and hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post.

By mid-June, seven weeks after the announcement of the merger, hotel records indicated that one T-Mobile executive was making his 10th visit to the hotel. Legere appears to have made at least four visits to the Trump hotel, walking the lobby in his T-Mobile gear.

These visits highlight a stark reality in Washington, unprecedented in modern American history. Trump the president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump the businessman owns a hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania.

Countries, interest groups and companies like T-Mobile -- whose future will be shaped by the administration's choices -- are free to stop at both and pay the president's company while also meeting with officials in his government. Such visits raise questions about whether patronizing Trump's private business is viewed as a way to influence public policy, critics said.

Last week, a Post reporter spotted Legere in the Trump hotel's lobby. In an impromptu interview, the T-Mobile chief executive said he was not seeking special treatment. He chose the Trump hotel, he said, for its fine service and good security.

"It's become a place I feel very comfortable," Legere said. He also praised the hotel's location, next to one of the departments that must approve the company's merger.

"At the moment I am in town for some meetings at the Department of Justice," Legere said. "And it's very convenient for that."

The VIP Arrivals lists obtained by The Post -- in which Trump hotel executives alerted their staff to foreign officials, corporate executives, long-term guests, Trump family friends and big spenders -- provide an inside look at some of the hotel's customers. The Post obtained lists for about a dozen days in 2018.

Those lists showed 38 nights of hotel stays by the T-Mobile executives. Because The Post's data are incomplete, the number could be higher.

Rooms at the luxury hotel routinely cost more than $300 per night.

The Post shared details about those stays -- gleaned from the VIP Arrivals lists and eyewitness accounts -- with both T-Mobile and the Trump organization. Neither challenged the findings. After Legere's brief interview at the Trump hotel, T-Mobile declined to comment further for this article.

Trump's hotel also has hosted parties put on by the Kuwaiti and Philippine embassies, rented hundreds of rooms to lobbyists paid by Saudi Arabia, and hosted a large meeting of the oil industry's lobbying group.

But the T-Mobile case stands out because the company's executives were expected at the hotel so soon after announcing that they needed a win in Washington.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Eric Trump -- who is running the family business while his father serves in the White House -- said in an email that the hotel has "absolutely no role in politics."

Before last year, Washington had been a place of disappointment for T-Mobile, the third-biggest of America's four big cellphone providers, which has long sought a merger to grow bigger.

In 2011 and in 2014, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company planned to combine with rivals: first AT&T, then Sprint. But both times, the Obama administration rejected the mergers on antitrust grounds, saying they would decrease competition and hurt consumers.

On April 29, 2018, T-Mobile announced that it would try again with Sprint.

The deal required approval from agencies including the Justice Department, which handles antitrust enforcement, and the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the airwaves that cellphones use. Those two agencies declined to comment.

Sprint, the market's fourth-place player, is largely owned by SoftBank, a Japanese company whose founder, Masayoshi Son, has built his own relationship with Trump. After Trump's election, Son was praised by the incoming president for a promise to invest $50 billion and create 50,000 jobs in the United States. Sprint declined to comment for this article.

A Section on 01/17/2019

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