The US government has paid nearly $1 million to President Trump’s company since he took office, including 1,600 nightly room rentals at Tr...
The US government has paid nearly $1 million to President Trump’s company since he took office, including 1,600 nightly room rentals at Trump’s hotels and golf clubs, according to records observed by the Washington Post.
The whopping $970,000 bill was racked up almost entirely by trips taken by the president, his family and his top political aides.
According to The Post, the government isn’t believed to have paid for the rooms for Trump or his family at his properties, however it did pay for staffers and Secret Service agents to accompany him.
Beginning in the first month of his presidency, the payments create an unparalleled business relationship between Trump’s administration and his company.
Records show the payments have also continued into this year, meaning taxpayers have now funded the equivalent of more than four years’ worth of nightly stays at Trump hotels, including 950 nights at Trump’s National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and 530 nights at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
During the president’s most recent vacation at Mar-a-Lago, the Secret Service was charged $32,484.30 – the equivalent of booking out 82 rooms for a night.
The US government has paid nearly $1 million to President Trump’s company since he took office, including 1,600 nightly room rentals at Trump’s hotels and golf clubs, according to records observed by the Washington Post
Though he's surrendered day-to-day operation of the Trump Organization to his eldest son, Eric, Trump still maintains ownership.
In an interview with Yahoo News last year, Eric Trump said that when government officials visit Trump properties alongside the president, they are ‘charged like 50 bucks’.
However, in the 1,600 room rentals observed by The Post, the nightly rate appears to be far higher than specified.
In fact, the lowest listed room rate was for $141.66 per-night, which was for each of the four rooms inside a cottage in Bedminster. Comparatively, the highest rate was recorded at Mar-a-Lago at $650 per-night.
The Trump Organization has not yet responded to a DailyMail.com request to provide evidence that the government was charged rates as low as those claimed by Eric Trump.
The president has visited his own properties 250 times since his inauguration in 2017. The last visit he made was on March 8, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered business nationwide – including many Trump properties.
While neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump administration has disclosed specifically how much taxpayer money has been paid to Trump’s companies over the last three years, The Post has compiled its own accounting with hundreds of pages of federal spending documents.
While the outlet’s investigation is still in development, the discoveries yielded thus far show that Trump has certainly received an extraordinary amount of funding from his own government.
‘It’s not just that there’s a huge amount of money being spent: we have no idea how much the actual figure is,’ said Jordan Libowitz, of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Post. ‘We don’t know what’s happening . . . only that the taxpayers are footing the bill for it.’
In an interview with Yahoo News last year, Eric Trump said that when government officials visit Trump properties alongside the president, they are ‘charged like 50 bucks’
During the president’s most recent Mar-a-Lago stay, the Secret Service was charged $32,484.30 – the equivalent of booking out 82 rooms for a night
Aside from Trump, the only other president or vice president to charge lodging to his own Secret Service Protectors is, coincidentally, his presumptive Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
In that instance, the former VP charged rent for a cottage neat his home in Delaware which was listed in public records at the time. Across a six-year period, Biden received $171,600 from room rentals at the property.
Trump, meanwhile, eclipsed that total by March 17, 2017, after just two months in office.
Presidents are exempt from conflict-of-interest rules that prohibit federal employees from steering government business to their own private companies.
However, the Constitution forbids the commander-in-chief from taking additional payments from the federal government, other than their salary.
Trump’s lawyers have protested the rule was never intended to prohibit business transactions, such as hotel stays. His company has also attempted to mitigate concerns, insisting it only charges the government ‘at cost’.
‘If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,’ Eric Trump told Yahoo last year, adding that the cost totaled around $50.
However, 1,600 room rentals suggested otherwise. Among them, was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Mar-a-Lago in February 2017, during which three different federal agencies paid for hotel rooms inside the estate.
US taxpayers have now funded the equivalent of more than four years’ worth of nightly stays at Trump hotels, including 950 nights at Trump’s National Golf Club (above) in Bedminster, New Jersey, and 530 nights at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visited the Mar-a-Lago in February 2017. Across the entire weekend, the government handed over $11,000 to the Trump Organisation for room rentals, with none of the rates matching those touted by Eric Trump
Firstly, the Secret Service pad for three rooms across two nights and we charged $650 per-room, per-night - the highest sum so far discovered.
The State Department then paid for six rooms across the same time period and were charged varying rates between $520 per-night to $546 – the normal rate offered to civilian guests. They were later offered partial refunds, and the rate was reduced to $396.15 per night.
Finally, the Defense Department also paid $1,469 for rooms at the club that weekend, though The Post couldn’t determine how many they rented, or what rate they paid.
Across the entire weekend, the government handed over $11,000 to the Trump Organisation for room rentals, with none of the rates matching those touted by Eric Trump.
Similarly, in Washington, where Secret Service agents stayed in the Trump International Hotel for 137 nights to guard Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the government was charged $242 per-night.
The most recent records, dated between late 2019 and early 2020 showed that Mar-a-Lago was charging the $396.15 per-night.
During the president’s most recent vacation there, the Secret Service was charged $32,484.30 – the equivalent of booking out 82 rooms for a night.
It remains unclear how the Trump Organization calculated the rates it charged the government.
No comments