D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has announced a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, the Trump Organization, and the Trump International Hotel for allegedly abusing nonprofit funds to enrich the Trump family. In the complaint filed Wednesday, Racine alleges that the committee violated District law by making a payment of $1.03 million to book a ballroom at the Trump Hotel, despite warnings from committee staff and Trump aides that the charges were unreasonable.

“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine said in the statement.

The attorney general laid out the complaint on a press call Wednesday, saying that the Trump entities and inaugural committee failed to seek out market value for the event space at the Trump-owned hotel, paying “rental rates that were well in excess of its own pricing guidelines.” He also argued that they used at least $300,000 in nonprofit funds to throw a private party for the then-president-elect’s children on the evening of the inauguration over the objection of event staff with the committee.

Racine says his office is asking the court “to recover the money that the inaugural committee improperly paid the Trump entities and through a constructive trust, restore it to a proper public serving purpose.”

The Office of the D.C. Attorney General’s investigation revealed that the recently sentenced former Trump aide Rick Gates opened discussions in November 2016 with Trump hotel staff about using the hotel’s ballroom and meeting rooms for inauguration events. Over email, committee senior staffers raised concerns about the initial quote from the hotel: $450,000 a day for eight days, for a total of $3.6 million, well above hotel’s own price guidelines, per the lawsuit.

Gates wrote to Ivanka Trump that he was worried about “the optics” of the committee paying such high price and “the media making a big story out of it,” according to Racine. While Donald J. Trump Jr. has taken over the daily operations of the Trump Old Post Office LLC, the president has not renounced his ownership stake in the business.

The hotel’s general manager later met with Gates at the hotel and offered a new quote of four days of space: $175,000 per day, plus catering costs, which ultimately totaled more than $1 million, according to Racine. He added that the non-profit inaugural committee didn’t even use the space for official events on two of those days.

But was Trump himself aware of these dealings? Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the inaugural committee’s event planner, made note of a meeting she had on December 16, 2016 in which she discussed pricing of all inaugural events with Trump in person, according to the attorney general’s investigation. She also expressed her concerns to Ivanka Trump and Gates in follow-up emails, per the suit, arguing that the rental fee shouldn’t exceed $85,000 per day (it wound up being more than double that).

The Trump Organization tells DCist in a statement that the complaint “reeks of politics and is a clear PR student.”

“The AG’s claims are false, intentionally misleading, and riddled with inaccuracies,” the Trump Organization spokesperson says. “The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that the hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities, and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Trump’s inaugural committee is also the target of a federal investigation, which began in 2018 amid concerns that it received illegal foreign donations. Earlier this month, a major donor was charged with obstruction of the federal inquiry.

This isn’t the first time that Racine has sued the president over actions at his hotel. Racine, who has mentioned that he can see Trump’s D.C. hotel from his office, joined the Maryland attorney general in suing Trump for “flagrantly” violating the Constitution in 2017 (strangely enough, Trump later applauded Racine at a press event and called him “fantastic”). After a panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit over the summer, a majority of the circuit’s judges voted to rehear the case in the fall.

Racine’s office has several other open cases targeting organizations’ alleged misuse of nonprofit funds. He closed his statements on Wednesday by issuing a warning of sorts: “Nonprofits in the District are on notice that we’re looking over their shoulder for compliance with District law and will not hesitate to take action if they violate our statutes.”

This story has been updated with a statement from the Trump Organization.