Just How Much Money Has the Government Spent at Trump Properties? It Won't Give an Account to the People

People in America were impressed when President Donald Trump was taking his annual salary as president and giving it away.  It is a substantial amount of money, $400,000, but honestly, it’s a drop in the bucket to what the man takes in through his business.  Of course, I cited the fact that this president, though he told the American people he wouldn’t have time for golf, has golfed more in his first term in office than the usurper did in his eight years, and each time he does it costs a lot of money considering the security detail.  However, what amount of the people’s money is being spent by government when they attend the president’s resorts?  They won’t say.

First, here’s his promise broken.

The CIA-tied Washington Post reported on previously undisclosed spending at President Trump’s properties.

WaPo reports:

President Trump’s company charges the Secret Service for the rooms agents use while protecting him at his luxury properties — billing U.S. taxpayers at rates as high as $650 per night, according to federal records and people who have seen receipts.

Those charges, compiled here for the first time, show that Trump has an unprecedented — and largely hidden — business relationship with his own government. When Trump visits his clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J., the service needs space to post guards and store equipment.

Trump’s company says it charges only minimal fees. But Secret Service records do not show that.

At Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, the Secret Service was charged the $650 rate dozens of times in 2017, and a different rate, $396.15, dozens more times in 2018, according to documents from Trump’s visits.

And at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the Secret Service was charged $17,000 a month to use a three-bedroom cottage on the property, an unusually high rent for homes in that area, according to receipts from 2017. Trump’s company billed the government even for days when Trump wasn’t there.

Eric Trump, The Trump Organization executive vice president and the president’s son, told Yahoo Finance last year, said of hosting events like the 2020 G-7, “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free,” Trump said. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.”

Apparently, someone is not being honest here.

ProPublica added:

The Post’s figures — adding up to $471,000 — are far from complete because government agencies have resisted disclosing their spending at Trump properties.

“He’s paying our money to himself,” the Post’s David Fahrenthold said in our latest episode of “Trump, Inc.” “There must be so much more we haven’t seen.”

While the president has visited his properties on nearly a third of his days since he took office, the Secret Service has not listed its spending on Trump properties in a public database of federal spending. And some of what has been disclosed has been misleading. The Post discovered that the nearly dozen payments listed as “Trump National Golf Club” were actually made to Mar-a-Lago, which is not a golf club.

The White House did not respond to the Post’s questions about the payments. The Secret Service said it always “balances operational security with judicious allocation of resources.” It did not explain why it hadn’t disclosed the spending in the government’s public database. And the Trump Organization said it’s not currently charging the Secret Service $650 per room per night.

They also stated, “There are still plenty of questions. For one: Why has the Secret Service spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., even on days when the president was not visiting?”

So far, though they have asked for answers, they haven’t gotten any.

The people have a right to know how that money is being spent and on what.  Clearly, when it comes to this issue, if Trump wants to provide all those things for free, he is more than capable of doing so, but if he is charging for it, then it is just a clear conflict of interest.

Article posted with permission from Sons Of Liberty Media